The social joy in life’s securer road,
Its easy pleasure, its substantial good;
The happy thought that conscious virtue gives,
And all that ought to live, and all that lives. 
   But who are these?  Methinks a noble mien
And awful grandeur in their form are seen,
Now in disgrace:  what though by time is spread
Polluting dust o’er every reverend head;
What though beneath yon gilded tribe they lie,
And dull observers pass insulting by: 
Forbid it shame, forbid it decent awe,
What seems so grave, should no attention draw! 
Come, let us then with reverend step advance,
And greet—­the ancient worthies of Romance. 
   Hence, ye profane!  I feel a former dread,
A thousand visions float around my head: 
Hark! hollow blasts through empty courts resound,
And shadowy forms with staring eyes stalk round;
See! moats and bridges, walls and castles rise,
Ghosts, fairies, demons, dance before our eyes;
Lo! magic verse inscribed on golden gate,
And bloody hand that beckons on to fate:-
“And who art thou, thou little page, unfold? 
Say, doth thy lord my Claribel withhold? 
Go tell him straight, Sir Knight, thou must resign
The captive queen;—­for Claribel is mine.” 
Away he flies; and now for bloody deeds,
Black suits of armour, masks, and foaming steeds;
The giant falls; his recreant throat I seize,
And from his corslet take the massy keys:-
Dukes, lords, and knights, in long procession move,
Released from bondage with my virgin love:-
She comes! she comes! in all the charms of youth,
Unequall’d love, and unsuspected truth! 
Ah! happy he who thus, in magic themes,
O’er worlds bewitch’d, in early rapture dreams,
Where wild Enchantment waves her potent wand,
And Fancy’s beauties fill her fairy land;
Where doubtful objects strange desires excite,
And Fear and Ignorance afford delight. 
   But lost, for ever lost, to me these joys,
Which Reason scatters, and which Time destroys;
Too dearly bought:  maturer judgment calls
My busied mind from tales and madrigals;
My doughty giants all are slain or fled,
And all my knignts—­blue, green, and yellow—­dead! 
No more the midnight fairy tribe I view,
All in the merry moonshine tippling dew;
E’en the last lingering fiction of the brain,
The churchyard ghost, is now at rest again;
And all these wayward wanderings of my youth
Fly Reason’s power, and shun the light of Truth. 
   With Fiction then does real joy reside,
And is our reason the delusive guide? 
Is it then right to dream the syrens sing? 
Or mount enraptured on the dragon’s wing? 
No; ’tis the infant mind, to care unknown,
That makes th’ imagined paradise its own;
Soon as reflections in the bosom rise,
Light slumbers vanish from the clouded eyes: 
The tear and smile, that once together rose,
Are then divorced; the head and heart are foes: