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.