Text: Edgar Allan Poe (ed. James H. Whitty), “Romance,” The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911, p. 116


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[page 116, unnumbered:]

ROMANCE

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

[[v]]

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

[[v]]

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.

 


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Notes:

None.

 

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[S:0 - JHW11, 1911] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Romance (ed. J. H. Whitty, 1911)