Tread Softly

Abstract

Had I the heaven's 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 In Caroline Elton's Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors, she references The Cloths of Heaven to evidence her awareness of the responsibility she carries when lecturing hopeful future doctors on the tougher side of medicine. As an occupational psychologist whose specialty is physicians and trainees with career difficulties, she knows the wisdom she shares can be deflating. Elton recounts trying to heed the last line of Yeats' poem- "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"-before speaking to medical school applicants at a talk organized by the British Medical Journal.