For the vision to reappear.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Probably the best thing about endeavoring to learn about poetry and poems for myself is that I can choose what catches my interests as opposed to having it forced upon me as it often is in school.This poem is from Birds of Passage, Flight the Third (1873). Longfellow was recognized in his lifetime and I think a new work by him was looked forward to. Bob Blair from The Poet's corner, an ardent admirer writes:
"Part of the Longfellow caricature is of a poet self-consciously poetic (and) Longfellow's Fata Morgana has a lot of archaic conventions in it, but at heart it is a plain complaint about the impossibility of achieving perfection. "
Not only is Fata Mogana known as the legendary sister of King Authur but it's also a term used by Sicilians as the name of a mirage that manifests during certain seasons off the Calabrian coast.
Sources:
Part of the Longfellow caricature is of a poet self-consciously ...:
http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/010227f.htm
Public domain text taken from The Poets’ Corner:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/longf03.html#8
CST Approved