Fancy in Nubibus

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

O, IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease,

Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,

To make the shifting clouds be what you please,

Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould

Of a friend’s fancy; or, with head bent low,

And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold,

’Twixt crimson banks; and then a traveller go

From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous land!

Or, listening to the tide with closèd sight.

Be that blind Bard, who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.