ROMANCE
Composer
Sigmund Romberg
Lyricist
Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein 2nd
Publisher
Harms Inc.
Lyrics

Romance, a play boy who is born each spring
To teach the nighingale to sing
A very pretty song:
"I love you."
Romance, a legend on an old brocade,
A prince who tells a country maid:
"I love you."
Now where this whimsy comes from, I don't know;
For when it come it's just about to go.
Romance, a flower that will bloom a while
With sunshine from a lover's smile,
That lover's [sic] tears bedew! Ah!

Yet, when I seek this beauty
Flower of youth's first dawning,
I find a prosy world-a-day world,
stretching and yawning!
Love is locked up in cages,
Kept for a poet's pages.
Life and adventure Don't seem to be
paying attention to me!

And so I dream of fair Romance and let my fancies weave pretty stories,
And tho' I know they aren't so, I like to go wand'ring amid thier wistful glories.

My Princes become what I mould them,
And they stay for the breath of a sigh!
I open my arms to enfold them,
And they're gone like the breeze rushing by.
Ah, this is a humdrum world;
But when I dream I set it dancing
When life is gray, I have a way to keep it gay,
Passing the time of day Romancing.