The Unattained
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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.
“’Tis not alone thy thought supreme
That here upon thy path has risen;
I am the artist’s highest dream,
The ray of light he cannot prison.
I am the sweet ecstatic note
Than all glad music gladder, clearer,
That trembles in the singer’s throat,
And dies without a human hearer.
“I am the greater, better yield,
That leads and cheers thy farmer neighbour,
For me he bravely tills the field
And whistles gaily at his labour.
Not thou alone, O poet soul,
Dost seek me through an endless morrow,
But to the toiling, hoping whole
I am at once the hope and sorrow.
“The spirit of the unattained,
I am to those who seek to name me,
A good desired but never gained:
All shall pursue, but none shall claim me.”
