"enchanted land, we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream."
Once in this enchanted country, haste seems foolish. Why should we toil
on as if we were walking for a wager? It is as if one had the privilege
of joining Izaak Walton as he loiters in the cool shade of a sweet
honeysuckle hedge, and should churlishly trudge on along the dusty
highway rather than accept the gentle angler's invitation: "Pray, let us
rest ourselves in this sweet, shady arbor of jessamine and myrtle; and I
will requite you with a bottle of sack, and when you have pledged me, I
will repeat the verses I promised you." One may, as a matter of strict
conscience, be both a pedestrian and a prohibitionist, and yet not find
it in his heart to decline such an invitation.
The poets who delight us with their verses are not always serious-minded
persons with an important thought to communicate. When I read,
"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,"
I am not a bit wiser than I was before, but I am a great deal happier;
although I have not the slightest idea where Xanadu was, and only the
vaguest notion of Kublai Khan.
There are poems whose charm lies in their illusiveness. Fancy any one
trying to explain Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." Yet when the mood is on
us we see her as she leans
"From the gold bar of Heaven:
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand
And the stars in her hair were seven."