5 November 2007

Had I the heaven's embroided cloths*

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.




*Okay, 'cloths' seems a bit weird to modern readers. You'd probably take it to mean 'clothes'. However, I do think that Yeats meant 'cloth', which in contemporary English would be both the plural and the singular. I haven't heard of anyone using 'cloths' before, but rather 'cloth' for the plural, so please, please don't think I'm making a grammatical typo.