Yet all have two escapes into the Ideal World; viz. Memory and Hope—Example of Hope in youth, however excluded from action and desire—Napoleon's son.
Section VII.
Example of Memory as leading to the Ideal—Amidst life, however humble, and in a mind however ignorant—the village widow.
Section VIII.
Hence in Hope, Memory, and Prayer, all of us are Poets.
THE IDEAL WORLD.
I.
Around "this visible diurnal sphere,"
There floats a world that girds us like the space;
On wandering clouds and gliding beams career
Its ever-moving, murmurous Populace.
There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below,
Ascending live, and in celestial shapes.
To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go?—
Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes:
To care, to sin, to passion close thine eyes;
Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise!
Hark, to the gush of golden waterfalls,
Or knightly tromps at Archimagian walls!
In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark
The River Maid her amber tresses knitting:—
When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark,
And silver clouds o'er summer stars are flitting,
With jocund elves invade "the Moone's sphere,
Or hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear;"[N]
Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn
Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves
Joy into song—the blithe Arcadian Faun
Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves,
While, slowly gleaming through the purple glade,
Come Evian's panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid.
Such, O Ideal World, thy habitants!
All the fair children of creative creeds—
All the lost tribes of Phantasy are thine—
From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts,
Or Pan's first music waked from shepherd reeds,
To the last sprite when heaven's pale lamps decline,
Heard wailing soft along the solemn Rhine.
II.