The speaker of this poem is a dreamy, lovelorn man. Originally the poem was given the title “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, giving the speaker a concrete name. Although drawn from Celtic mythology, Aedh is a fictional character who appears in several of Yeats’ poems as an author-insert representative of himself. Regardless of the character’s background, the poem illustrates that the speaker has a vivid imagination and is like a “starving artist” type of person. They look to the sky and see a bolt of priceless fabric. Later, they admit that they can’t offer their love anything more than dreams.