HE WISHES FOR THE
CLOTHS
OF HEAVEN
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B.Yeats
William
Butler Yeats is regarded as the major poet of the Twentieth century, and his
popularity today is undimmed. In this poem he wishes for the ‘embroidered
cloths’ of heaven to lay them under his love’s feet. Yeats regards the common
ground too coarse a surface for his sweetheart’s feet to tread upon. This is
the Romantic Yeats endeavouring through his verse to transcend time and space
and enter that other world of light and mystery. He declares his material
poverty and confesses that he only has his ‘dreams’ or poems to cushion the
passage of his love through this world. The ‘dreams’ are the cloths of heaven and he implores his
love to walk gently on these imaginative outpourings. Loving someone makes us
vulnerable as we open up our secret innermost feelings. Yeats in his early
twenties met Nationalist activist, Maud Gonne, so beginning a lifelong
infatuation. She refused his marriage proposal on four occasions, eventually to
Yeats’ horror marrying someone else. Perhaps in this poem he is remembering the
far from soft step Maud left on his own youthful dreams.
Gerard O'Shea
For a You Tube version of this poem…
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