“Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” is one of literature’s most famous and most quoted love poems, largely because it openly and honestly lays out the true vulnerability of love. This poem was written by a poet who was deeply in love with a woman he’d known only a short while, and who was feeling the intense first rush of a passionate crush. Both the speaker and the poet himself are taking an enormous emotional risk in offering their feelings with open arms. The speaker begins by detailing a grandiose gesture they wish they could perform to win the love of this woman: “I would spread the cloths under your feet” (Line 5). This brings to mind the cliché of the man spreading his cloak beneath the feet of a queen, and other romanticised displays of courtly love. Moreover, the speaker equates...