The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Yeats, William Butler. “Adam’s Curse.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43285/adams-curse.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Adam’s Curse,” by WB Yeats, is a 39-line narrative poem told in rhyming heroic couplets. It originally appeared in Yeats’ 1903 collection In the Seven Woods, at roughly the midpoint of the poet’s career. Within this poem one can see the shifting style as his earlier influences become more grounded in his later, more contemporary approach. This poem takes its name from a biblical myth and is inspired by a real-life conversation between Yeats, his sometime-lover Maud Gonne, and Gonne’s younger sister Kathleen Pilcher (described as a “close friend”). The speaker and their friends compare the labor of poetry to the laborr of feminine beauty and romance, exploring their disillusionment in a changing world.