Artemesia, I think you are right that poetry is part of Yeats' subject here: he says so. But the poem associates the curse of having to work for everything fine, since Adam's exile from Eden, seems to apply to love between people, as well. Both involve striving, he says-- and I believe him.

I'm sympathetic to what you say about this great poem submitted to contemporary editors-- but it's mind bending or paradoxical to imagine that. Early 21st century Americans don't speak the same way as cultivated Irish people of the very early 20th century. Even single terms like "schoolmaster" and "kitchen pavement" are a little strange-- even more, though more subtly, the syntactical patterns and the manners they evoke are different.

So if I imagine (a) that I never saw this poem and (b) that someone wrote it and submitted it to Slate next week . . . I get a cramp in my imagination! I hope I would recognize an extremely brilliant and inventive writer of verse, and possibly I would feel bewildered why that writer was impersonating someone from another time and place.

Mainly, thank you for participating Artemesia, and for giving me some things to ponder.