In honor of National Poetry Month, every Wednesday in April I’m sharing one of my favorite poems for you to read and share with a friend, a lover, or even a foe (I promise they won’t be a foe for long).

This week’s poem is taken from Love Poetry Out Loud (edited by Robert Alden Rubin), and was written by W. B. Yeats, one of the greatest poets ever to write in the English language. I could go on for hours about Yeats, but I won’t. I’ll just say that “Adam’s Curse” is a gorgeous poem that demonstrates Yeats’s ability to write in a natural, conversational rhythm while using heart-crushingly beautiful language. Also, you could read this poem five times through without even noticing that it is written in iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets; he manages the form so expertly that it is almost invisible.

The other reason I love this poem is that it is simultaneously a love poem (he is addressing Maud Gonne here, the woman who he yearned after for most of his life), and a poem about writing. Yeats elaborates a moment of artistic self-doubt familiar to (dare I say) every writer: Why do we work so hard to make beautiful things? To what end? Why not get a real job and be respected in the world? Why do we labor to reveal the human heart but are still so lonely?

— Sarah Rose Nordgren, Publicity Assistant

Adam’s Curse

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.’

And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache

On finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

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.