Adam's Curse Literary Elements

An unidentified poet. The speaker of this poem is, to an extent, a representation of W.B. Yeats himself.

Three stanzas—one long and two short—with an AABBCC rhyme scheme, written in a loose iambic pentameter.

The speaker compares poetry to "stitching and unstitching" through a metaphor, and sunlight is compared to "embers." Through simile, meanwhile, Yeats compares the moon to a shell, and time to water.

Moments of alliteration include the S's of "sweet sounds," the B's of "beautiful old books," the D's of "daylight die," and the W's of "Washed by time’s waters." Meanwhile, the phrase "go down upon your marrow-bones" contains alliterative O sounds.

The poem's primary irony is the fact that, as a result of "Adam's curse," beautiful objects must appear effortless and natural while being created with a great deal of painstaking effort. The secondary irony of the poem is the paradoxical fact that, despite the unsustainability of creating beauty and the difficult work involved in it, many people seem to be unable to resist the temptation to seek it out and exhaust themselves in pursuing it.

Lyric poem, with some formal allusions to the sonnet

An outdoor location on a summer evening

Reflective, disillusioned, longing

The speaker is the protagonist, while the conditions that threaten love and beauty are the antagonist.

The major conflict is between the speaker's desire for love, and for other beautiful things, and the nonnegotiable reality that such beautiful things are often impossible to achieve or sustain.

The work's climax is the speaker's final confession of simultaneous love and hopelessness to his listener.

The speaker's original, intellectualized sentiments about the degradation of love foreshadow his more personal confessions about lost or doomed love.

The speaker asserts that, since Adam's fall, "there is no fine thing" produced without hard work. This is an understated, nonchalant way to refer to objects of beauty.

The poem alludes at various points, including in its title, to the biblical Book of Genesis and the story of humanity's fall from paradise.

In an instance of synecdoche, "marrow bones" are used as a stand-in for legs. Later, "ears" are similarly used as a stand-in for the listener herself.

N/A

The speaker's assertion that poetry is harder work than manual labor is somewhat hyperbolic, though it is presented earnestly. Similarly, the assertion that the middle class looks down on poets universally is a hyperbolic one.

N/A