Audiobook · read by volunteers
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010), Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Betsie Bush, Diyan, Ezwa, Glen Hallstrom, Justin S Barrett, Lizzie Driver, Rebecca Dekker · 9 chapters · 7 min
About the book
Few love poems are shorter or more tender than this one. William Butler Yeats offers all the richness of the sky as a gift, and then admits that he has only his dreams to offer, asking for gentleness in return. Here the poem is read nine times by nine volunteers, each with a different voice and pace. Each reading lasts barely a minute, and together they show how a single set of lines can be sung in many ways. Nine voices, nine small performances, and a poem that is never quite the same twice. It is a short listen for a quiet moment, and a pleasing way to discover how much a reader can bring to a handful of lines.
Introduction
William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 and died in 1939. An Irish poet, playwright and public figure, he was a leading force in the Irish literary revival and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His poetry moved from the dreamy, mythic style of his early work to a harder, more direct manner in later years.
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven was published in 1899 in the volume The Wind Among the Reeds. Aedh is one of several figures Yeats created in his early verse, a lover who speaks in a voice of longing. The poem is only a few lines long, but it has become one of the most quoted love poems in English. Its closing lines, in which the speaker has only his dreams to offer and asks the beloved to tread softly, are known to many who have never read anything else by Yeats.
This recording belongs to the weekly poetry project of LibriVox, in which volunteers each record the same short poem so that the listener can compare their readings. It was the project for the week of 10 December 2006, and it brings together nine versions. They are numbered one to nine and last only a few minutes in total.
Why listen? Because hearing a small poem several times is a good way to notice what lies in it. Each reader pauses in a different place and gives different weight to the same words, and the poem stays fresh.
Public domain
William Butler Yeats died in 1939: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text