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.