Three Yeats Songs

Song Cycle by Rhian Samuel (b. 1944)

1. Had I the Heavens' Embroidered Cloths [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

Had I the [heavens']¹ 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.

Text Authorship:

by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), title 1: "Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven", title 2: "He wishes for the cloths of heaven", appears in The Wind among the reeds, first published 1899

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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

View original text (without footnotes)
Original title is "Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven"; revised 1906; re-titled "He wishes for the cloths of heaven".

Confirmed with W. B. Yeats, Later Poems, Macmillan and Co., London, 1926, page 45.

¹ Gurney: "Heaven's"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

Total word count: 60