Bohemia, o'er thy unatlassed borders <br />How many cross, with half-reluctant feet, <br />And unformed fears of dangers and disorders, <br />To find delights, more wholesome and more sweet <br />Than ever yet were known to the "elite." <br /> <br />Herein can dwell no pretence and no seeming; <br />No stilted pride thrives in this atmosphere, <br />Which stimulates a tendency to dreaming. <br />The shores of the ideal world, from here, <br />Seem sometimes to be tangible and near. <br /> <br />We have no use for formal codes of fashion; <br />No "Etiquette f Courts" we emulate; <br />We know it needs sincerity and passion <br />To carry out the plans of God, or fate; <br />We do not strive to seem inanimate. <br /> <br />We call no time lost that we give to pleasure; <br />Life's hurrying river speeds to Death's great sea; <br />We cast out no vain plummet-line to measure <br />Imagined depths of that unknown To-Be, <br />But grasp the Now, and fill it full of glee. <br /> <br />All creeds have room here, and we all together <br />Devoutly worship at Art's sacred shrine; <br />But he who dwells once in thy golden weather, <br />Bohemia--sweet, lovely land of mine-- <br />Can find no joy outside thy border-line.<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bohemia-2/
