The Idealist
I Hear fair Fancy call’d a guide
Who smiles when one is youthful,
But oft in sudden shades will hide,
And prove at times untruthful.
“When through the skies,”
They say, “she flies
And leaves behind each earthly care;
When round about her in the air
No danger seems attending
The light we find her wending,
Beware! amid the brightest air
The storm may burst, the lightning tear,
Beware and fear!
With earth so near
None can be free from care.”
I hear fair Fancy call’d a guide
Of rarest grace and beauty;
But prone to lead the soul aside
From irksome paths of duty.
“Man is but man:
He cannot scan
Too high delights, and highly rate
The lowly joys of earth’s estate.
A soul to fancy turning,”
They say, “is fill’d with yearning;
And lives in dreams and idle schemes,
That with their lure of rival gleams
Make dim the light
About the sight
The working soul esteems.”
I hear fair Fancy call’d a guide
Oft rendering life distressful,
With views that loom too high, too wide,
To make a man successful.
They say, “We err
Who soar with her.
Earth only shoos or shoots a bird;
To draw its wealth, it yokes the herd.—
But few are those not tiring
Of natures too aspiring.
The common leaders of the day
Amid the common people stay,
Who but confide
In those that guide
Along the common way.”
And yet my dear and dangerous guide,
I prize thy peerless beauty.
I chose thee long ago my bride
For love and not for booty.
How much is wrought
By risking naught?
When I behold a path of bliss,
Tho’ bordering on the worst abyss,
My fears of falling under
Will not restrain my wonder.
And, from what thou hast found for me,
Full many a truth my soul can see
That earth must know
Ere it forego
Its need of knowing thee.