"The old high way of love," the "high courtesy" from "learned books" partly refers to the poetry Yeats was writing up until In The Seven Woods (1904), where Adam's Curse appears. Adam’s Curse was a new departure even among a book of new departures. This is not The Fiddler of Dooney. It is the least “Celtic Twilight” and the least “lyric” among the shorter poems in the collection. Yeats is working hard to be casual, and conversational, and to do narrative. All three are new to his work and the poem’s narrative machinery grinds its gears a little. The better we know the poem the less we notice that it's hard to tell at the beginning whether there are three or four characters – is “that beautiful mild woman, your close friend” one or two? – we figure out, but if it matters we shouldn’t have to. We don’t know for sure till the end the gender of “you,” leaving the siuation of address unclear. It helps to read it in its original context following The Folly of Being Comforted, The Arrow, Never give all the Heart.