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Subject: Introduction to Literary Genres

Subject Code: HUM111
Instructor: Dr. Gayathri Prabhu
Semester and Year: Year 1 Semester 1
Program: BA Humanities
Name: Nandhitha Babuji
Roll Number: 203606064
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Text (for reference)

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven1

1 Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

2 Enwrought with golden and silver light,
3 The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
4 Of night and light and the half-light,
5 I would spread the cloths under your feet:
6 But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
7 I have spread my dreams under your feet;
8 Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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W.B. Yeats’s poem, ‘Aedh Wishes for The Cloths of Heaven’, uses the elements of

light and colour to strengthen the themes of love, trust and yearning. Published in the year

1899 in his collection, ‘The Wind Among the Reeds’, this is one of his most popular love

poems. This is one of Yeats’s earlier poetries and is entrenched in symbolism and strong

themes such as love and trust. This poem reflects the time of Yeats’s real life where a woman

named Maud Gonne rejected his love multiple times. While this poem might reflect his life,

it’s symbolism and metaphorical nature appeals to each reader differently. Colour and light
1
“Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, Poets.org, December 29, 2020,
https://poets.org/poem/aedh-wishes-cloths-heaven.
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are the strongest literary elements due to their intrinsic involvement and symbolism in the

poem. This analysis attempts to understand ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ through

the insights that colour and light provide.

The yearning of a man to his partner about the trust lost and hoping for any chance of

revival is the major theme running throughout the poem. In the beginning lines, ‘embroidered

cloths’ is evoked as it holds a metaphor that portrays the clothes as the relationship and trust

of the lovers. ‘Embroidered’ represents the intrinsic entanglement of trust between them.

However, it’s important to note how the poem has a hypothetical tone, such that the

‘embroidered cloths’ of trust is something the narrator wants but doesn’t have. The line ‘I

would spread the cloths under your feet’ creates an imagery of the clothes being the bridge

for his lover to cross over to trusting him again. This is very crucial since he doesn’t have the

cloth yet his description of the clothes unravel the layers of their relationship. The line where

the cloth is ‘enwrought with golden and silver lights’, depicts the shift from a warmer colour

to a cooler colour indicating the degradation of trust. Silver being a cooler colour, is also

associated with its shine. The shine becomes symbolic to the possibility of regaining the trust.

In the lines that follow (in the poem), the colours shift to ‘blue’ and ‘dim’ and ‘dark cloths’

evidently creating the picture of darkness and fear. The loss of trust and the friable nature of

their relationship is shown by the change of colours, from having ‘silver light’ followed by

extinguishing it in the ‘dark cloths’. As the colour and light metaphor comes to an end, ‘light

and night and half-light’ teases the reader with the possibility of hope between day (light) and

night. This metaphor strengthens the core themes of yearning along with the very rich

imagery portraying the degradation of a relationship nuanced through the narrative of a mere

piece of cloth.

A critique on the structural and stylistic elements is necessary as it provides the

backbone of the rhetoric and aesthetics discussed above. Devilaben Hirabhai Rohit’s paper on
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‘Use of symbolism in Poems of W.B. Yeats’2 calls W.B. Yeats the ‘master of symbolism’.

This is very evident in the chosen poem. Colour symbolism is crucial in building the themes

of love, trust and yearning. As mentioned, the colour description moves from warmer colours

to cooler colour. However, the imagery these different colours evoke make the understanding

more succinct. With ‘golden light’, the idea of gold can be related to richness, and greed.

There is a person who has done wrong and is seeking for forgiveness. The usage of ‘gold’ as

a symbol of greed explains the drastic yearning the man shows. A deeply disturbing imagery

is created with the idea of a ‘greedy yearning’ to attain peace with self. ‘Golden light’ can

relate to the ‘golden hour’ of warmth before the sunset, to indicate the tipping point of the

relationship before it begins to deteriorate. ‘Silver light’ creates a vivid picture of fleeting

lights, i.e., fleeting moments of happiness before the big fall. The sentence breaks here with

the shining colours and enters the second line with ‘blue’. This indicates a certain dullness

associated with the general idea of ‘the blues’ as sadness. The ending of the trust is shown as

the arch of colours collapses into ‘the dim and the dark cloths.

This part of the analysis focuses on the structure and how it supports the themes and

metaphors running through the poem. The noticeable part of the structure that interests a

reader is the length of the poem; very short and precise 8 lines. In the paper by Devilaben

Hirabhai Rohit, he writes about W.B. Yeats utilising symbolism to maintain short and concise

sentences3. The poem creates rich images in the reader’s mind merely with colours and lights.

The short sentences make the poem very fluid while still holding onto a bare framework of

structure. The poem utilises identical rhyme, wherein the rhyme of a word is repetition of the

word itself; alternative lines of the poem end with the same word. This is established in the

chosen poem in the lines 2 and 4, both ending with ‘light’. The crucial information is that the

2
Devila H. Rohit, “Use of Symbolism in Poems of W.B. Yeats”, International Journal of Research in Humanities
and Social Sciences 1, no.6 (August 2013): 2.
3
H. Rohit, “Use of Symbolism”,2.
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line in the middle, line 3, ‘the blue and the dim and the dark’ creates an imagery of darkness.

It is ironic to note how line 3 (of darkness) is surrounded conveniently by ‘light’ of line 2 and

4. This depiction strengthens the theme of trust and the hope that surrounds the darkness.

Devilaben Hirabhai Rohit talks about how the rhyme functions for memory and to draw back

attention to a point when he discusses the ‘Rhyme’ subsection of W.B. Yeats’s essay “The

Symbolism of Poetry4”. By drawing attention to light, the poem distinguishes itself from a

ballad of sorrow and hopelessness to one of having the possibility of hope. Attention must be

given to the usage of ‘and’ in the description of colours. By breaking the grammatical rules of

writing multiple words consecutively with commas, the usage of ‘and’ between each colour

indicates the extended time between the changing phases of the relationship.

Poetry is often about the omitted words. The space between lines of the poem creates

an atmosphere of the mood and tone. The arch of the darkening light and colour creates a

mood of fear and tension; the fear that his lover might not forgive him. Readers can feel the

tension due to the uncertainty in the narrator’s hopes as he says ‘I have spread my dreams

under your feet, tread softly because you tread on my dreams’. It is important to remember

the metaphor of the cloth as the bridge which she has to ‘walk’ over to forgive him. Here we

notice how the poem goes on about the things he could have done, the strong bridge of ‘the

embroidered cloths’ that he could have built, but he didn’t. He only has a weak bridge which

he hopes will hold her as she crosses over to trusting him. The lines ‘Had I, the heavens

embroidered cloths’, begins with a statement of confession, where the narrator accepts that he

does not possess what his lover deserves but he direly wants to be forgiven. The sentence ‘but

I being poor have only my dreams’ is another statement of confession about his lack of what

his lover deserves.

4
H. Rohit, “Use of Symbolism”,2.
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When he finally spreads his ‘dreams’ under her feet there is a suspended moment of

anticipation and hope that reverberates to the readers. The hypothetical tone of the writing

creates a strong emotional involvement of the readers with the tragic situation of the narrator.

The narrator speaks about the possibilities before revealing his weak alternative (‘I have only

my dreams’). The readers feel the void and become sympathetic to the narrator and they hope

his weaker alternative will succeed.

‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ holds so much beyond its mere 8 lines. Being

a hypothetical narrative, it shows tension and yearning in a much more elevated level. The

ending lines of the poem ‘tread softly, because you tread on my dreams’ is the epitome of

yearning where the narrator implores his lover to walk softly on the only bridge he could

afford to build. This is a poem that begs for forgiveness, to be treated gently and to be trusted

again. The narrative is timeless and is very relatable because it tells a love story that anybody

could experience. The poem creates an atmosphere, a tone and mood, instead of an explicit

narrative. The symbolism leaves so much to the imagination of the readers allowing them to

write their own stories. The structure of the poem is like holding water; it is fluid with

creativity but is still held within a framework for readers to analyse and critique.

‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’, is a song of deliverance. It is a plea to the

heavens for help in the time of ‘light and night and half-light’; the half-light being sunset into

the dusk. The invocation of the heavens and the hypothetical pleas have been a hyperbole to

the poem, making it more vivid in the minds of the readers. As the narrator pleads, ‘Had I the

heaven’s embroidered cloths’, he cries for hope in the time of the setting sun. To extend the

light just a little longer before the darkness swallows it. Holding onto the light, just a little

longer, for the hope to flourish into forgiveness to salvage the relationship.

This paper has seen the quintessential role of light and colour in bringing the poem to life.
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Bibliography

“Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, Poets.org, December 29, 2020,

https://poets.org/poem/aedh-wishes-cloths-heaven.

Devila H. Rohit, “Use of Symbolism in Poems of W.B. Yeats” International Journal of

Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 1, no.6 (August 2013): 26-29.

Words without footnote and bibliography :1567.