Poem - 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--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.

Note: paroquet: parakeet