When I am weary at the antic chance...

When I am weary at the antic chance,

The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,

The hope and fear in jugglery, and see

How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,

And life a laboured trick — the years advance

A shrilling chorus in affected dance

With lust of many eyes that watch and wink

Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink

Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance —

Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,

Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin —

Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin

Through curtained silence trips as from a trance

With blushing flowers for Columbine — Romance.