THE eyes of dreaming Fancy fall On ivied tower and moss-grown wall, And straightway o'er the unlovely Past The glamour of Romance is cast. Forth from the high portcullised gate The knights and damsels ride in state, The white plumes nod, the rich robes gleam, Mail flashes like a sunlit stream. And all that sordid story mean, The sin, the suffering that have been, The lifelong dungeons dark and foul, The tortured limbs, the famished soul, Fade from the self-deluded mind, And eyes by wayward Fancy blind, Till of the crime, the blood, the pain, No faintest memories remain. Ah! wayward Fancy, turn from these Fond dreams and bootless fantasies; Upon the living, not the dead, Are golden rays of noontide shed. The lives to-day of small and great March onward to a nobler fate; Hopes higher, darker fears they hold, Than those ignoble days of old. The Present's wider, fuller life, Its loftier aims, its keener strife, Can deeper touch the yearning heart To higher song and truer art. And fairer still and nobler far The glimpses of the Future are: The race transfigured, wrong redressed, Creation tending towards the Best. And queenly Knowledge, throned fair, Mistress alike of Earth and Air, Crowned with a diadem of Peace, Watches her boundless realms increase. Turn, wayward Fancy, turn thine eye From these false tales of chivalry; The Night is past, the Day begun, Salute, acclaim the ascending Sun. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE ECSTASY by HAYDEN CARRUTH PLACE FOR A THIRD by ROBERT FROST PUSSY-WILLOW TIME by ROBERT FROST THE CHANT OF THE VULTURES by EDWIN MARKHAM SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: SHACK DYE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS ANOTHER DARK LADY by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON |