He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Earlier titled "Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryA poor lover offers his dreams, and asks that they be trodden softly.
The speaker imagines owning the embroidered cloths of the heavens, the skies of day, dusk and night worked in gold and silver light. If he had them, he would spread them under his beloved's feet. But he is poor and has only his dreams, so he spreads those instead. The poem ends with a plea that is both gentle and exposed: "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." In eight lines it moves from a grand wish to a single fragile gift.
Lines to remember
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
Line by line
Lines 1 to 5The wish
The poem opens with a condition, "Had I": if he owned the heavens' "embroidered cloths", woven with "golden and silver light", he would lay them at her feet. The sky becomes fabric in every shade, "The blue and the dim and the dark", and the repeated "and" makes the cloths seem to unroll across the lines.
Lines 6 to 8Only dreams
Line 6 turns with "But": he is poor and has "only my dreams". What was a wish now happens: "I have spread my dreams under your feet". The last line asks her to "Tread softly", a request that shows how much he has risked by laying himself open to her.
Themes
Love and vulnerability
The speaker gives the beloved the one thing he truly owns and places it where she could crush it. "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams" is not a demand but a plea. The poem is about the risk of loving someone who may not love back: the gift cannot be taken back, only handled with care or without it.
Wealth and poverty
The "embroidered cloths" of heaven, "Enwrought with golden and silver light", are the richest gift imaginable, and they are out of reach. "But I, being poor" sets real poverty against imagined splendour. The poem suggests that dreams, which cost nothing, may still be worth more than gold and silver.
Context
The poem was published in The Wind Among the Reeds (Elkin Mathews, London, 1899), Yeats's richest early collection. There it was titled "Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven": Aedh was one of the named figures Yeats used as speakers in that book. From 1906 the title became "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", making the speaker any lover.
The book's love poems are full of longing and elaborate, dreamlike imagery, and this short lyric is the plainest and most quoted of them. Its last line is often used on its own, on cards, in speeches and at weddings and funerals.
Form
Eight lines with no true rhymes: instead the same words return at the line ends, "cloths", "light", "cloths", "light", then "feet", "dreams", "feet", "dreams". The lines vary in length and beat. The repetition, with "cloths" giving way to "dreams", carries the meaning: the gift he cannot give is replaced by the one he can.
Title only: 'Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' in 1899 (Gutenberg 32233); 'He wishes...' from 1906 (Gutenberg 49608).
