Tread Softly, Love

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.

W.B. Yeats

This is just how I see love. Loving someone is the ultimate act of vulnerability, is it not? To lay your very hopes and dreams under the feet of another in order that they may tread on the softest cloth, to save their feet. This is the love of a child to its mother and of a mother to a child, and every other true love.

Tread softly then children, even though a mother's love-and-dreamcloth can withstand some childish trampling. Tread softly mother, ever softly, as I fear the childrens' dreams cannot.