Poems of Youth: 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 have no time for idle cares

Though 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.

1829.

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