Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “[Romance]” (Text-04c), Saturday Museum (Philadelphia), March 4, 1843, p. 1, col. 6


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­[page 1, column 6, continued:]

[[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

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I scarcely have had time for cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky!

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings

That little hour, 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:

This poem is quoted as part of a biographical article on Poe. (The present version of the poem is identical to the February 25, 1843 text.)

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[S:1 - PSM, 1843 (photocopy)] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - Romance (Text-04c)