In Sherwood Anderson’s “A Visit,” a speaker comes to someone’s window at night and asks to be covered with a golden cloth. The opening image of a “field of the cloth of gold” and gold in the dusty fields sets an autumn scene, rich but fading. The gold suggests late sunlight or fallen leaves, but also a blanket, a comfort the speaker longs for. There is tiredness and tenderness in the request: “Lay the golden cloth upon me.” The speaker has come through the streets at night and now wants the dust and words of travel and talk brushed away. What remains is a desire for stillness and sleep. The mood is quiet, intimate, and dreamlike, with a soft edge of surrender—rest as release, perhaps even the edge of death, imagined gently as sleep under a warm golden covering.
A Visit — Summary
Westward the field of the cloth of gold. It is fall — see the gold in the dust of the fields.
Lay the golden cloth upon me. It is night and I come through the streets to your window.
The dust and the words are all gone, brushed away. Let me sleep.