The Poet, dreaming in divinest mood,
Scanning the future with a Prophet’s eyes,
Beheld the outlines of the Perfect Man
Take shape before the vision of his soul;
And though the beauteous phantom could not stay,
He caught its grace and glory in the song
Wherein he praises the Ideal Man
Of whom he dreamed, and whom the world should know,
When in the teeming womb of Time the years
Had ripened him, mature in every part.