Baskadia

Had I the sky's weaved fabrics,

Enwrought with brilliant and silver light,

The blue and the faint and the dull fabrics

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the materials under your feet …

One of Yeats' short show-stoppers, this sonnet is quite possibly of his generally renowned and broadly anthologised verse: 'Be cautious since you track on my fantasies.' It's a flawlessly expressive urging to be dealt with compassionate by one to whom one has swore one's life and heart.

It was composed for Maud Gonne, the lady Yeats cherished for a long time and seen as his main dream. They never wedded, despite the fact that Yeats asked her on a few events. Joseph Sharpen, quite possibly of Yeats' best biographer, records that Yeats once remarked in a talk that one more of his sonnets, 'The Cap and Chimes', was the method for winning a lady, while 'He Wants for the Materials of Paradise' was the method for losing one.