TO ROMANCE.
175
Nor find a Sylph in every dame,
A Pylades[1] in every friend?
But leave, at once, thy realms of air[2]
To mingling bands of fairy elves;
Confess that woman's false as fair,
And friends have feeling for—themselves?
4.
With shame, I own, I've felt thy sway;
Repentant, now thy reign is o'er;
No more thy precepts I obey,
No more on fancied pinions soar;
Fond fool! to love a sparkling eye,
And think that eye to truth was dear;
To trust a passing wanton's sigh,
And melt beneath a wanton's tear!
5.
Romance! disgusted with deceit,
Far from thy motley court I fly,
Where Affectation holds her seat,
And sickly Sensibility;
- ↑ It is hardly necessary to add, that Pylades was the companion of Orestes, and a partner in one of those friendships which, with those of Achilles and Patroclus, Nisus and Euryalus, Damon and Pythias, have been handed down to posterity as remarkable instances of attachments, which in all probability never existed beyond the imagination of the poet, or the page of an historian, or modern novelist.
- ↑
But quit at once thy realms of air
Thy mingling ——.—[MS. Newstead.]
