Explore "The Unattained" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A vision beauteous as the morn, / With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming, / Slow glided o'er a field late shorn / Where walked a poet idly dreaming. / He saw her, and joy lit his face, / "Oh, vanish not at human speaking," / He cried, "thou form of magic grace, / Thou art the poem I am seeking.
"I've sought thee long! I claim thee now- / My thought embodied, living, real. " / She shook the tresses from her brow. / "Nay, nay! " she said, "I am ideal. / I am the phantom of desire- / The spirit of all great endeavour, / I am the voice that says, ‘Come higher,' / That calls men up and up for ever.