Romance

Romance, who loves to nod a sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet

Hath been - a most familiar bird -

Taught me my alphabet to say -

To lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child - with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years,

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky,

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings -

That little time with lyre and rhyme

To while away - forbidden thing!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.

--Edgar Allan Poe