“Yes, my dear Richard, thou shalt hear me own Follies and frailties thou hast never known; Thine was a frailty,--folly, if you please-- 60 But mine a flight, a madness, a disease. “Turn with me to my twentieth year, for then The lover’s frenzy ruled the poet’s pen; When virgin reams were soil’d with lays of love, The flinty hearts of fancied nymphs to move: Then was I pleased in lonely ways to tread, And muse on tragic tales of lovers dead; For all the merit I could then descry In man or woman was for love to die. “I mused on charmers chaste, who pledged their truth, 70 And left no more the once-accepted youth; Though he disloyal, lost, diseased, became, The widow’d turtle’s was a deathless flame. This faith, this feeling, gave my soul delight: Truth in the lady, ardour in the knight. “I built me castles wondrous rich and rare, Few castle-builders could with me compare; The hall, the palace, rose at my command, And these I fill’d with objects great and grand. Virtues sublime, that nowhere else would live, 80 Glory and pomp, that I alone could give; Trophies and thrones, by matchless valour gain’d, Faith unreproved, and chastity unstain’d; With all that soothes the sense and charms the soul, Came at my call, and were in my control. “And who was I? a slender youth and tall, In manner awkward, and with fortune small; With visage pale; my motions quick and slow, That fall and rising in the spirits show; For none could more by outward signs express 90 What wise men lock within the mind’s recess. Had I a mirror set before my view, I might have seen what such a form could do; Had I within the mirror truth beheld, I should have such presuming thoughts repell’d: But, awkward as I was, without the grace That gives new beauty to a form or face, Still I expected friends most true to prove, And grateful, tender, warm, assiduous love. “Assured of this, that love’s delicious bond 100 Would hold me ever faithful, ever fond, It seem’d but just that I in love should find A kindred heart as constant and as kind. Give me, I cried, a beauty: none on earth Of higher rank or nobler in her birth; Pride of her race, her father’s hope and care, Yet meek as children of the cottage are; Nursed in the court, and there by love pursued, But fond of peace, and blest in solitude; By rivals honour’d, and by beauties praised, 110 Yet all unconscious of the envy raised. Suppose her this, and from attendants freed, To want my prowess in a time of need, When safe and grateful she desires to show She feels the debt that she delights to owe, And loves the man who saved her in distress-- So fancy will’d, nor would compound for less.