“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.”
WB Yeats, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”
There is
something spellbinding about this poem. I think it is the twin repetitions,
consonant yet contradictory. The heavens (or the heaven’s cloth) are represented
by the interwoven word ‘light’ (echoed by internal rhymes ‘night’ and ‘feet’).
The mundane reality of the poor besotted suitors is paradoxically scored by the
repeated word ‘dreams’ as if his love can never be real.
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