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.

Succeeding years, too wild for song,

Then roll'd like tropic storms along,

Where, tho' the garish lights that fly

Dying along the troubled sky,

Lay bare, thro' vistas thunder-riven,

The blackness of the general Heaven,

That very blackness yet doth fling

Light on the lightning's silver wing.

For, being an idle boy lang syne,

Who read Anacreon, and drank wine,

I early found Anacreon rhymes

Were almost passionate sometimes—

And by strange alchemy of brain

His pleasures always turn'd to pain—

His naivete to wild desire—

His wit to love—his wine to fire—

And so, being young and dipt in folly

I fell in love with melancholy,

And used to throw my earthly rest

And quiet all away in jest—

I could not love except where Death

Was mingling his with Beauty's breath—

Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny

Were stalking between her and me.