Poems by Yeats 2 (3/6/09)

Poem: Adam's Curse (83)
Passage:
"I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon."

Evident in the title of the poem, Yeats uses the biblical allusion to the story of Adam and Eve to set the tone for the poem "Adam's Curse", a poem about love. The first line of the poem reads, "We sat together at one summer's end". Yeats incorporates the time motif, evident in most of his poems, by using the phrase "at one summer's end", it holds an ambiguous time frame. Incorporating the allusion to Adam lets the reader know it is not a warming love story, because Adam was betrayed by Eve; Adam was banished from Eden because of Eve. Much like Adam, the speaker had "thought for no one's but your ears", clearly, the speaker is in love, however, like Adam, he is crushed to find out that they had "grown as weary-hearted as the hollow moon." The tone of the poem is mild (emphasized by the repeated "mild woman"), it uses little adjectives, and there is no flashy language. The last two stanzas, however, are switched to a more saddening tone, the switch begins on line 29, "We saw the last embers of daylight die", because the daylight was "dying" (emphasized by word choice, harsh diction, the moon has risen. It is interesting to note the juxtaposition between night and say (darkness and light), and also the tone of the poem. The sun gives life, and the moon sheds some light on darkness. The "hollow moon" is important to point out because not only is the moon associated with darkness, but also, the moon receives its light from the sun.
In the above passage, the first three lines (everything before the semi-colon) is a single syllable, except for the word "beautiful". Yeats emphasizes the focus on the narrator's love for this woman (Adam's Curse), he surrounds the feminine sound "beautiful" with all masculine single syllable words.