Romance
Air: The Diadem’s Noble Radiance

Ah! underneath a sham of gladness

All your sorrow do not hide!

You’re more pleasing in your sadness

Than with your enchanting smile:

Through her mists of vapor low

Aurora that way charms the eyes;

And, fair within her pallid glow,

In darkness, Phoebe charms the skies.

Who regards you, mute and pensive,

Dreaming alone the whole day long,

Thinks you a virgin quite naïve

Who a first love sighs upon;

Forgetting the august coronet

That binds superb your locks of hair,

To his transports gives himself

And feels love’s earliest fires flare!

Gérard de Nerval