Lyric Poem · Nature

Romance

by Edgar Allan Poe

Reading room

1Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

2With drowsy head and folded wing,

3Among the green leaves as they shake

4Far down within some shadowy lake,

5To me a painted paroquet

6Hath been — a most familiar bird —

7Taught me my alphabet to say —

8To lisp my very earliest word

9While in the wild wood I did lie,

10A child — with a most knowing eye.

11Of late, eternal Condor years

12So shake the very Heaven on high

13With tumult as they thunder by,

14I have no time for idle cares

15Though gazing on the unquiet sky.

16And when an hour with calmer wings

17Its down upon my spirit flings —

18That little time with lyre and rhyme

19To while away — forbidden things!

20My heart would feel to be a crime

21Unless it trembled with the strings.

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“Romance” by Edgar Allan Poe — quilloak.com/poems/romance

Quick facts

Poem: Romance
Poet: Edgar Allan Poe
Length: 21 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Nature, Love, Childhood

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 21 lines · 2 stanzas of 10–11 lines
Line length: Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).

The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849
Source record: PoetryDBRomance by edgar-allan-poe, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 a46d48c84135a88f…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Nature Love Childhood

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