My The Cloths of Heaven (A Choral Piece for SATB chorus, a cappella) was completed in September 2013 and was composed for and is dedicated to the Wake Forest University Concert Choir (Brian Gorelick, conductor) in celebration of the Choir’s 2014 tour of Ireland. This approximately three-minute composition is a setting of Irish poet William Butler Yeats’s well-known love poem originally entitled, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. First published in 1899 as a part of his third volume of poetry, The Wind Among the Reeds, Yeats’s expressive and provocative poem reflects through both dream and reality his adoration toward the woman he loves.
Dan Locklair
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heaven’s 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.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)