I look forward to your selections each month, Robert, as they take me back, out of my buzi-ness and cares, to when I could do important things like consider the meanings of poems . . .

Adam's Curse was first taught to me by an Estonian English professor who delightfully insisted that good and great poetry was, in some way, inexhaustible in the ways it would allow us to read and interpret; it opened windows of interpretation, handed us glasses we could peer at the world through . . . In any event, I remember us gong line by line and coming on with a thread, coming to a reading, by which we all agreed that Yeats was singing about the end of the Victorian error, that the resonances and hollowness and loss of the old high ways of love was nigh. The day was ending and the night of the 20th century about to being. . . In fact, isn't the poem from 1899? Did you mention the year? I like the consideration of the voices and the conversation, but it's hard for me not to read it as Yeats talking to Clio or some such, the muse of history, and watching twilight fall on his beloved days. . . It has the same kind of valedictory tone as Dover Beach, and the sea of faith receding, the press of darkness and melancholy. . . Do you hear it?

Or it is just a dinner party and Yeats wanted to reiterate his lineage with Adam -- and seduce his readers with -- that longing?

Thanks, mgerard. Bless your Estonian teacher.

The authoritative Peter Campion puts the poem in 1904, here <link>

Do read Peter Campion's quotation from WBY's letters there, and Campion's remarks on the language in "Adam's Curse."

My Variorum Yeats says he published the poem in The Monthly Review in 1902, then in the American publication The Gael in 1903. (The Variorum also reveals that Yeats in revision sharpened the dialogue, in particular what the beautiful mild woman says. He made it better as actual speech.)

Regard "Dover Beach," I think maybe the Yeats description of the sunset is elegiac or nostalgic about his youthful, misty romanticism as Arnold's description of the surf is elegiac or nostalgic about the Christian faith of his youth.

RP: I think maybe the Yeats description of the sunset is elegiac or nostalgic about his youthful, misty romanticism as Arnold's description of the surf is elegiac or nostalgic about the Christian faith of his youth.

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

Blue green sunset stayed in my mind. I’ve seen the green flash, many times, but never anything close to what I would call a blue green sunset. I wonder if that is what Yeats was referring to, a green flash? I had never heard what I had always called a green flash referred to as a blue green flame or an emerald sunset (which is now my new favorite).

Wouldn’t it be cool if Yeats picked that up from Jules Verne? And…what better sunset for the Emerald Isle…? Or, maybe that is both a fiction and a fantasy… I entered the poem into my search engine because I too was curious about the date of publication and ran into this, which I found interesting. Whether Maud Gonne was a subject in the poem, or not, he sure seemed to put a lot of effort into chasing her down: (last link, OLD AGE: Yeats delivered a series of speeches in which he attacked the "quixotically impressive" ambitions of the government and clergy…look to yourself Yeats).

Thanks for the poem; that’s what I like about poems, you get to read, think, learn and even make things up (and, a nod to the reading, nice job ).

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Regarding Maude Gonne: after a while, don't you just want to slap the boy? Dude...she's just not that into you!

falcon:

Regarding Maude Gonne: after a while, don't you just want to slap the boy? Dude...she's just not that into you!

I think this poem indicates that he's finally figured that out and that, as a result, he feels more than a bit sorry for himself.

(as philador explicates so well)

I'm thinkin 15 or 20 years later when he's still moping around...

Hap and Campion, your conversation about Yeats' comical "moping," the (his) new century, etc.-- maybe Peter Campion's post in my "Welcome" thread, with his quotations from WBY's letters is relevant.