Make God's Praise Glorious!: Tread Softly

Sunrise in Marble CO by Jerry Begly

This evening I ran across the lovely poem by William Butler Yeats, "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven." What a delight to discover it is also beautifully set to music by several current day composers. Do you know the poem or one of the compositions?

This discovery reminded me of something Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: "A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."

How many of us take that advice to heart even on a weekly basis? I would add that the beauty of nature, such as a sunrise, the song of a bird, the laughter of children at play, and so on are part of this "sense of the beautiful" too.

This concept was expanded in beautiful depth, many years before Goethe. The apostle Paul wrote with a flourish of rhetorical anaphora:

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." (Philippians 4:8)

And so I offer this lovely poem and its modern compositions as a golden whatever for this day, a way to keep alive the "sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.