There is little danger that too many shall ever hearken to the invitation from the fair worlds to which all souls belong, and where alone they can be luminous and free. For centuries, now, what innumerable voices have pleaded with men to make themselves worthy of heaven; while they have moved on heedless of the heaven that lies about us here, placing their hopes and aims in material and perishable elements, athirst neither for truth, nor beauty, nor aught that is divinely good! They sleep, they wake, they eat, they drink; they tread the beaten path with ceaseless iteration, and so they die. If one come appealing for culture of intellect, not because they who know, are stronger than the ignorant and make them their servants, but because an open, free, and flexible mind is good and fair, better than birth, position, and wealth, they turn away as though he trifled with their common-sense. Life, they say, is not for knowledge, but knowledge for life; and they neither truly know, nor live. And if here and there some nobler soul stand forth, he degrades himself to an aspirant to fame, forgetting truth and love. Enough there are on earth who reap and sow, Enough who give their lives to common gain, Enough who toil with spade and axe and plane, Enough who sail the seas where rude winds blow; Enough who make their life unmeaning show, Enough who plead in courts, who physic pain; Enough who follow in the lover's train, And taste of wedded hearts the bliss and woe. A few at least may love the poet's song, May walk with him, their visionary guide, Far from the crowd, nor do the world a wrong; Or on his wings through deep blue skies may glide And float, by light transfused, like clouds along Above the earth and over oceans wide.