Uploaded March 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's the great William Butler Yeats reading his romantic poem "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" better known as "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" is a poem Yeats wrote for Maud Gonne, a woman he loved for most of his life although she did not return his feelings. It was published in 1899 in his third volume of poetry, The Wind Among the Reeds.The speaker of the poem is the character Aedh, who appears in Yeats's work alongside two other archetypal characters of the poet's myth: Michael Robartes and Red Hanrahan. The three are collectively known as the principles of the mind. Whereas Robartes is intellectually powerful and Hanrahan represents Romantic primitivism, Aedh is pale, lovelorn, and in the thrall of La belle dame sans merci.[1] (The character "Aedh" is replaced in volumes of Yeats's collected poetry by a more generic "he".)
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
Here's the great William Butler Yeats reading his romantic poem "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" better known as "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" is a poem Yeats wrote for Maud Gonne, a woman he loved for most of his life although she did not return his feelings. It was published in 1899 in his third volume of poetry, The Wind Among the Reeds.The speaker of the poem is the character Aedh, who appears in Yeats's work alongside two other archetypal characters of the poet's myth: Michael Robartes and Red Hanrahan. The three are collectively known as the principles of the mind. Whereas Robartes is intellectually powerful and Hanrahan represents Romantic primitivism, Aedh is pale, lovelorn, and in the thrall of La belle dame sans merci.[1] (The character "Aedh" is replaced in volumes of Yeats's collected poetry by a more generic "he".)
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
