From Nerval's Sylvie

Worldly ambitions, however, meant little to our generation; the greedy scramble for honours and positions in which everybody was then engaged only served to distance us from all possible spheres of activity. The sole refuge left to us was the poets’ ivory tower – which we climbed, higher and higher, in order to isolate ourselves from the crowd. Having been guided to these heights by our masters, we at last breathed the pure air of solitude, drinking ourselves into oblivion from the golden cup of fable, drunk with poetry and love – love, alas, of vague shapes, of blue and rosy hues, of metaphysical phantoms. Seen close, any real woman seemed too gross to our starry-eyed sensibilities. She had to appear a queen or goddess: above all, she had to lie beyond reach.