And heard the language and beheld the lives
Of lass and lover, goddesses and wives,
That books, which promise much of life to give,
Should show so little how we truly live. 
   To me, it seems, their females and their men
Are but the creatures of the author’s pen;
Nay, creatures borrow’d and again convey’d
From book to book—­the shadows of a shade: 
Life, if they’d search, would show them many a change;
The ruin sudden, and the misery strange! 
With more of grievous, base, and dreadful things,
Than novelists relate or poet sings: 
But they, who ought to look the world around,
Spy out a single spot in fairy-ground;
Where all, in turn, ideal forms behold,
And plots are laid and histories are told. 
   Time have I lent—­I would their debt were less —
To flow’ry pages of sublime distress;
And to the heroine’s soul-distracting fears
I early gave my sixpences and tears: 
Oft have I travell’d in these tender tales,
To Darnley-Cottages and Maple-Vales,
And watch’d the fair-one from the first-born sigh,
When Henry pass’d and gazed in passing by;
Till I beheld them pacing in the park
Close by a coppice where ’twas cold and dark;
When such affection with such fate appear’d,
Want and a father to be shunn’d and fear’d,
Without employment, prospect, cot, or cash;
That I have judged th’ heroic souls were rash. 
   Now shifts the scene,—­the fair in tower confined,
In all things suffers but in change of mind;
Now woo’d by greatness to a bed of state,
Now deeply threaten’d with a dungeon’s grate;
Till, suffering much, and being tried enough,
She shines, triumphant maid!—­temptation-proof. 
   Then was I led to vengeful monks, who mix
With nymphs and swains, and play unpriestly tricks;
Then view’d banditti who in forest wide,
And cavern vast, indignant virgins hide;
Who, hemm’d with bands of sturdiest rogues about,
Find some strange succour, and come virgins out. 
   I’ve watch’d a wint’ry night on castle-walls,
I’ve stalk’d by moonlight through deserted halls,
And when the weary world was sunk to rest,
I’ve had such sights as may not be express’d. 
   Lo! that chateau, the western tower decay’d,
The peasants shun it,—­they are all afraid;
For there was done a deed!—­could walls reveal,
Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel! 
Most horrid was it:  —­for, behold, the floor
Has stain of blood, and will be clean no more: 
Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
And the long passage send a dismal tune, —
Music that ghosts delight in; and now heed
Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed;
See! with majestic sweep she swims alone,
Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan: 
Though windows rattle, and though tap’stries shake,
And the feet falter every step they take,
’Mid moans and gibing sprights she silent goes,