How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind <br />Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind; <br />Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude, <br />And wreck the solace of the poet's mood! <br />Young Zeno, practis'd in the Stoic's art, <br />Rejects the language of the glowing heart; <br />Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws; <br />Condemns th' effect whilst looking for the cause; <br />Freezes poor Ovid in an iced review, <br />And sneers because his fables are untrue! <br />In search of hope the hopeful zealot goes, <br />But all the sadder tums, the more he knows! <br />Stay! Vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast <br />The grateful legends of the storied past; <br />Whose tongue in censure flays th' embellish'd page, <br />And scorns the comforts of a dreary age: <br />Wouldst strip the foliage from the vital bough <br />Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou? <br />Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye <br />Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky; <br />Finds sylphs and dryads in the waving trees, <br />And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze <br />For whom the stream a cheering carol sings, <br />While reedy music by the fountain rings; <br />To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide <br />Till friendly presence fills the rising tide. <br />Happy is he, who void of learning's woes, <br />Th' ethereal life of bodied Nature knows; <br />I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems, <br />And flout his gravity in sunlight dreams!<br /><br />Howard Phillips Lovecraft<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fact-and-fancy/
