Scurrying from one thread or topic to another, I hope Mary Ann, Robert Thomas, Bottomfish and others here may have time to look at similar matters discussed in the conversation begun by Mark Turpin, at <link>

What I hear in "I had a thought for no one's but your ears" --and in those concluding lines that follow-- is a passionate, however weary-hearted attachment to the person to whom the entire poem is addressed . . . with her friend a presence that both makes possible and inhibits the delicate interplay of spoken and unspoken, social and personal, silent and lyrical.

I can respectfully understand those for whom "Adam's Curse" is not their favorite Yeats poem--such a different note than the agonized grandeur of "Sailing to Byzantium"-- though it is among my own. I love the tone he achieves with "We sat grown quiet at the name of love." In a way that capitalizes the last work, in a way it solemnly evokes the god Eros . . . and in another way there's a kind of smile in it, at how the erotic reality has (for a moment that doesn't end within the poem) shut up even the somewhat loquacious poet.

I like Mark Turpin's point about the "nakedness" in the admission of love at the end--the pathos is, of course, that this is unspoken. Like Robert, I've read and taught this poem a lot, and it changes with each reading. Recently I've been struck by the silence that comes up in the dramatic situation just before the "naked" admission. The poem tells us that the three of them "sat grown quiet at the name of love," but actually they stop talking after the poet's last remark (a good example of that pretentious quality Robert notes): "Yet now it seems an idle trade enough." I wonder if their sudden quiet has to do with the easy cynicism of the poet's remark here--love in the high manner is just "an idle trade"--especially because it seems to echo what the bankers and others say of poetry. It's almost as if the poet, to show off a bit before the ladies, is taking on a kind of world-weary role in his speech (which is contrary, as we find out, to what he really feels but can't say).

This is impossible to prove, of course, but I wonder if Yeats as he wrote the poem and thought about the conversation was embarassed and perhaps even ashamed by the easy glibness of that remark. He basically betrayed his true feelings and the high ideals of love when he said it. No wonder everyone shut up. Having done similar things under the pressure to come up with a good line in a conversation, as I suppose we all have, I'm touched by the vulnerability and self-critique implied here. It makes the sad romantic claim at the end all the more powerful.

Point well taken about "A Prayer for My Daughter," MaryAnn. My argument about "Adam's Curse" being a transitional poem in Yeats' career is shaky. I would say, though, that for somewhat similar reasons as "Adam's Curse," "A Prayer for My Daughter" is not one of my favorite Yeats poems.

I do think the turn at the end of "Adam's Curse" ("I had a thought for no one's but your ears") is moving in its acknowledgment of the limits of talk. One issue I haven't noticed anyone mention in any of the threads here is the "scrub a kitchen pavement" passage in the first stanza. It may be an unfair response on my part, but I'm so put off by this passage that it's hard for the speaker of the poem to regain credibility in my eyes (and ears). I can't help wanting to respond, "Come on, we poets may work hard, but don't tell me it's harder work than the old pauper breaking stones!" Maybe this perspective was fresh in Yeats' time, but "writers sweating blood" has become such a cliche in our time that it's hard for me to get past it. I would agree that writing is extremely frustrating--like playing golf in a game where the rules are you lose if you don't get a hole in one--but I just don't believe that poets work hard in the sense that coal miners (or floor scrubbers) do. The argument that Yeats is gently mocking his own pretentiousness seems quite a reach to me.

Robert, it's interesting to see that some posters are approaching the poem as if it's "really" about Yeats and Maud Gonne (even if they do so almost unconsciously) and other posters are approaching it "cold," deliberately not allowing themselves any preconceptions about the relationship among the 3 characters. And these varying approaches often result in entirely different conclusions -- e.g. what the speaker thinks of the "beautiful mild woman," whether the speaker is self-serving at the end.

TR Hummer's intriguing post is one among several that don't presuppose much. I'm wondering whether you and other teachers who might read this "prime" your students by telling them of Yeats' love for Gonne before they read the poem.

One issue I haven't noticed anyone mention in any of the threads here is the "scrub a kitchen pavement" passage in the first stanza. It may be an unfair response on my part, but I'm so put off by this passage that it's hard for the speaker of the poem to regain credibility in my eyes (and ears). I can't help wanting to respond, "Come on, we poets may work hard, but don't tell me it's harder work than the old pauper breaking stones!"

Robert Thomas, someone did mention this passage and proposed the poem is a kind of mock heroic. Wish I could help you out by remembering which thread that comment is located in.

MaryAnn, as I understand it, the biographical understanding of the poem identifies "your close friend" as Maud Gonne's younger sister.

That indicates that like many works of art this one is an invention: based on experience but freely re-imagining it. Unlike Yeats poems like "Easter 1916" or "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" this one does not include proper names.

In my own thinking about the poem, I'm aware that his erotic obsession with Gonne was the great central attachment of his life, different in intensity from that to his wife. But I'm also very aware that he invents a relationship for this poem: far more fictional, in my mind, than "your close friend" is "it all seemed happy." Insofar this is about him and Maude Gonne, I feel like saying, "It did?" Or "Hah." Or, "And when was that?"

In other words, the words of the poem make me feel like he's invented an early-September evening scene, a "we sat together" that feels settled, almost domestic. The time of day and the sitting together suggests a post-dinner drink. The relationship with the silent "you" feels not so much stormy and tormented and as as if "you" are about to marry someone else as relatively ok on the surface, but worn and weary under the surface.

So, to get back to your actual question, the fiction of the poem seems subtly but distinctly different from WBY's actual life, or --to be honest-- my received fiction of that life.

(Gonne did marry the other guy within a year or two after the writing of "Adam's Curse," didn't she? These discussions tend to reveal, amusingly, the severe limits to my scholarship; my friends and family know that I tend to get matters of fact wrong. Especially those regarding time and space.)

Can't speak to others, but, if I were teaching this poem, I wouldn't do that at the outset (though it might come up somewhere in the course of the discussion). My own opinion is that a poem is first of all what it says, and a reader (and especially a teacher!) needs to honor that fact rigorously, right up to the point that the poem itself presents us with a doorway to a "subtext" and a sign saying "Go this way now." To spin the poem in advance with biographical information (that might or might not be germane) would be loading the dice. When I'm gambling I ALWAYS do that, but when I'm teaching, never.

I do not put it past Yeats to change a sister to a close friend for the sake of a rhyme. I don't mean to trivialize his intention: he was devoted enough to rhyme to allow it to guide him, I think as a matter of practice. Equally important (and possible) is that changing the sister to a friend is a conscious statement, to himself and any reader who knows him, that this is fiction, intended to follow the demands of fiction, and be read as such. Perhaps these two elements are one for him, in the practice of his art. Yeats is moving from narrative, mythical poetry into something drawn or sketched from his own life, seeking a path forward and a balance point, and experimenting.

Philidor & I were talking about something like this in a thread called Mock Heroism. I believe Yeats is recalling and reframing this conversation some years after it occured. There is a little shame here, even an inkling of If only I'd shut up long enough for her to speak (notice she never does) things might have been different. I think we can all agree on one thing you say: it changes with each reading.

not hollow but heartfelt. A lot of folks here have said great stuff about how many different ways this poem can turn, over time. Especially if you're not doing backstory detective work on What Yeats Really Meant. The reading I like the most, the one that's my go-to when I'm reading it out loud, is the one that breaks open there, and really, really means it-- You: Beautiful. That your beauty and my efforts to love you remain legit, and "it had all seemed happy," but even though we've got so much going for us, we are still "weary-hearted."

Other readings of this same spot include the sloppy-seconds reading, in which, hey! Don't feel bad! You're beautiful, too! Or the we're-old one, in which back in the day you used to be beautiful, and I used to strive.

But for me what Mark Turpin said about the "nakedness and energy" is truest here, in this "you were beautiful"-- a sort of helpless admission. The "beautiful" in "beautiful mild woman" is just hollow. . . chitchat, in comparison. Maybe because this thought is "for no one's but your ears," it's to give us an earnest kind of Good Effort badge, a way-to-hustle pat on the back. You were beautiful, and I gave it my best shot, but we are not going to make it to the championships.

One of the ways I think casual conversation is working here is against the rhyme and meter--I love that friction, don't you guys?

Yes Jill, that is what I hear too, the "breaking-open" at the end, the intensity of the relationship along with the acknowledgment that the couple are weary-hearted. And the "helpless admission" in your words, restoring meaning to the word "beautiful" at the same time that the meaning does not solve that weary-heartedness. It's a stunning last few lines. And you describe them well.

To amplify on a few points above-- I agree with Jill's read on the last "beautiful"-- and I would extend this uncynical read to all the 'stock' romance words.

This is a poem about remembering that true, high, beautiful, exalted love exists-- even if it doesn't always last... that magical state wherein these simple words regain their meaning. Isn't the essence of head-over-heels love finding the beloved beautiful?

The 'breaking open' also feels in some way like the speaker is opening to himself. Admitting/acknoweldging the depth of his love alongside its failure, holding the two opposing ideas together, both true.

Like LauraHaynes and Jill, I feel those two strong emotions, "the depth of his love alongside its failure." Making it the unspoken conclusion, after an account of conversation, inward after outward, makes it stronger, multiplies the double feeling.

Belated response but I agree about the breaking open and heartfelt quality of the ending. I do find it moving if somewhat (forgive me) "On Golden Pondish." I can also see the mock-heroic interpretation of the first half of the poem, but I have a hard time accepting that. I just don't see much evidence for it IN the poem. It seems to me that readers who read the conversation as "mock" are basing that interpretation on their belief that "Surely one of the greatest, most profound poets ever to live couldn't simultaneously be such a doofus as to be sincere when he says XYZ," but yes, he could--that's the paradox of art. The question seems to be whether the turn between the emotion of the beginning and the emotion of the end of the poem is a sharp turn or only a gentle bend, and I read it as a gentle bend. I don't see the speaker at the end of the poem rejecting what he said earlier in the conversation, merely shifting to a different level.

I just love these two- and three-day discussions. All of this might be said in one class session, but having it spread out over several hours gives all of us -- those who participate and those who just read ("lurk" in Internet language) -- time to mull over and really digest what's said.

Thank you.