I am so far from blaming this idealizing
property of his mind, that I find it admirable in him. It is his quality,
not his defect. Without some touch of it life would be unendurable prose.
If I have called the world to which he transports us a world of
unreality, I have wronged him. It is only a world of unrealism. It is
from pots and pans and stocks and futile gossip and inch-long politics
that he emancipates us, and makes us free of that to-morrow, always
coming and never come, where ideas shall reign supreme.[318] But I am
keeping my readers from the sweetest idealization that love ever
wrought:--
"Unto this place whenas the elfin knight
Approached, him seemed that the merry sound
Of a shrill pipe, he playing heard on height,
And many feet fast thumping the hollow ground,
That through the woods their echo did rebound;
He nigher drew to wit what it mote be.
There he a troop of ladies dancing found
Full merrily and making gladful glee;
And in the midst a shepherd piping he did see.
"He durst not enter into the open green
For dread of them unwares to be descried,
For breaking of their dance, if he were seen;
But in the covert of the wood did bide
Beholding all, yet of them unespied;
There he did see that pleased so much his sight
That even he himself his eyes envied,
A hundred naked maidens lily-white,
All ranged in a ring and dancing in delight.
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