A Fancy by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"A Fancy" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a lyric poem in which a speaker, confined indoors during winter, entreats a companion to construct an elaborate sensory illusion of summer. The speaker issues a series of domestic commands — drawing crimson curtains to block the view of snow-covered hills, stoking the fire to midsummer intensity, placing potted plants to release fragrance, and positioning a caged bird to sing — all in service of transforming the winter room into a simulacrum of warm-season ease. The companion is then asked to fan the speaker with a gentle, languid motion that mimics a summer breeze drifting over wooded hills, and to sing a song saturated with warmth and light. Through this manufactured environment, the speaker intends to surrender fully to imaginative escape: lying as if in a clover field, hearing the companion's voice as wind, and receiving the caged bird's song as though it were a wild robin singing from the treetops. Winter, personified as a stalking conqueror moving across the earth, is to be defeated not by confrontation but by voluntary self-deception. The poem's central concern is the power of the imagination — specifically its capacity, when aided by carefully arranged sensory cues, to override an unwelcome reality. The speaker does not merely daydream passively; instead, the poem enacts a deliberate, almost theatrical staging of summer within a winter interior. Each requested action — the curtain drawn, the fire built high, the plants brought in one by one — functions as a prop in a private performance whose sole audience is the speaker's own dreaming mind. Wilcox presents this act of willful illusion without irony or melancholy. The tone is languid, comfortable, and entirely affirmative. There is no guilt about retreating from reality, no anxiety that the illusion will fail. The speaker is confident in the imagination's sufficiency and in the companion's willingness to serve as both stage manager and performer, fanning, singing, and sustaining the dream. The poem also quietly idealizes domestic intimacy. The companion's role is gentle and attentive — a presence whose voice and actions are instruments of the speaker's comfort and fantasy. The relationship implied is tender and compliant, the companion absorbed entirely into the speaker's imaginative need without resistance or separate will. Formally, the poem moves in regular ballad-like stanzas with a swinging anapestic rhythm that itself enacts the ease and warmth being conjured. The meter carries the reader along with the same unhurried momentum the speaker seeks — a rocking, seasonal softness that reinforces the escapist content. In summary, "A Fancy" is a compact, sensory-rich meditation on imaginative retreat, depicting one person's orchestrated flight from winter into a privately constructed summer, sustained by companionship, domestic arrangement, and the transformative capacity of a willing mind.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1873 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Nature Poetry · 269 words
First lines
Drop down the crimson curtains, / And shut out the dazzling snow, / The cold white mantle that covers / The hills, where the grasses should grow; / And stir up the fire till it burneth, / With a heat like the midsummer sun. / And hang up the cage by the window, / And bring in the plants, one by one.
Till they perfume the air with a fragrance / As rare as the summer can bring. / And call to the bird, till he trilleth / The sweetest of notes he can sing. / And let me lie here, while you fan me, / Till the lazy air stirs, like a breeze. / That comes o'er the hills in the summer, / And rustles the tops of the trees.
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A Fancy is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1873 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Date: 1873 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Nature Poetry, Pastoral Poetry, Domestic Poetry
- Length: 269 words
- Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for A Fancy by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Poem expresses personal emotion and mood through vivid imagery rather than narrative, focusing on the speaker's desires for comfort and escape.
- Romantic Poetry — Features idealized natural settings, emotional longing, intimate domestic scenes, and nostalgic yearning characteristic of Romantic tradition.
- Nature Poetry — Extensively employs natural imagery including snow, seasonal contrast, birds, plants, and summer landscapes as central poetic elements.
- Pastoral Poetry — Idealizes rural settings and summer countryside with clover fields and birdsong, creating an arcadian vision removed from urban reality.
Tags
romantic · poetry · sentimental · whimsical · nature · love · Victorian · lyrical · imaginative · emotional · nostalgic · dreamy