ROMANCE, who loves to nod and 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

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So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

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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 things —

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.