He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven by W.B. Yeats

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.

Some Thoughts…

on this poem – 

… I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Yeats won my heart forever with these lines.

on the poet – You would think that a man who wrote poetry that could melt hearts and set souls on fire would have women swooning at his feet. Not so for Yeats (1865-1939); his love-life was far more tortuous. At the age of twenty-three, he fell in love with Maud Gonne, a beautiful and dedicated member of the Irish Revolutionary movement of that time. Gonne married another man who was later executed for his reactionary activities. Some years later, he proposed to Gonne’s daughter (Yes, I know. Quite twisted.) who also refused him. He did go on to marry late in life – a marriage that made his life ‘serene and full of order’. His poetry too entered a new phase, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.