Aedh Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven (1899)

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf 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.

This is one of the most requested poems for people to recite at weddings. The poem was chosen to illustrate the monument to Yeats in the graveyard in Drumcliff, Co. Sligo where he is buried. Q. What do you think makes this poem so popular?

Q. Think of the different associations we might make of the heart? Or water?What are the different associations we might make of ‘dreams’?

This is a ‘wordle’ of the poem that shows, in order of size, the words that are repeated the most often. What does this reveal about the diction and rhyme scheme?

Q. Sign onto the internet and go to the wordle website. Click on create and paste the poem that I e-mailed you earlier in the week into the space provided. What does this reveal about the other poems he was writing at this time?

A contemporary of Wordsworth, in 1817 the Romantic poet John Keats introduced the idea of negative capability in a letter to a friend: ‘when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ Suggesting that literature can hold multiple meanings at once without contradiction.

Identify the ambiguities in The Lake Isle of Innisfree and Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven and write a paragraph exploring the possible multiple meanings.