Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VI. Fancy. 1904. | | | | Poems of Fancy: I. The Imagination | | Ideality | | Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) |
| | | THE VALE of Tempe had in vain been fair, | |
| Green Ida never deemed the nurse of Jove; | |
| Each fabled stream, beneath its covert grove, | |
| Had idly murmured to the idle air; | |
| The shaggy wolf had kept his horrid lair | 5 |
| In Delphi’s cell, and old Trophonius’ cave, | |
| And the wild wailing of the Ionian wave | |
| Had never blended with the sweet despair | |
| Of Sappho’s death-song: if the sight inspired | |
| Saw only what the visual organs show, | 10 |
| If heaven-born phantasy no more required | |
| Than what within the sphere of sense may grow. | |
| The beauty to perceive of earthly things, | |
| The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings. | | | | |
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