Read "Bohemia" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Bohemia, o'er thy unatlassed borders / How many cross, with half-reluctant feet, / And unformed fears of dangers and disorders, / To find delights, more wholesome and more sweet / Than ever yet were known to the "elite."
Herein can dwell no pretense and no seeming; / No stilted pride thrives in this atmosphere, / Which stimulates a tendency to dreaming. / The shores of the ideal world, from here, / Seem sometimes to be tangible and near.
We have no use for formal codes of fashion; / No "Etiquette of Courts" we emulate; / We know it needs sincerity and passion / To carry out the plans of God, or fate; / We do not strive to seem inanimate.
We call no time lost that we give to pleasure; / Life's hurrying river speeds to Death's great sea; / We cast out no vain plummet-line to measure / Imagined depths of that unknown To Be, / But grasp the Now, and fill it full of glee.
All creeds have room here, and we all together / Devoutly worship at Art's sacred shrine; / But he who dwells once in thy golden weather, / Bohemia -- sweet, lovely land of mine -- / Can find no joy outside thy border-line.