Is sacred to despair, its pedestal the grave.
III.
Has life so little store of real woes,
That here ye wend to taste fictitious grief?
Or is it that from truth such anguish flows,
Ye court the lying drama for relief?
Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief:
Or if one tolerable page appears
In folly’s volume, ’tis the actor’s leaf,
Who dries his own by drawing others’ tears,