Read "Romance" by Edgar Allan Poe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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 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.