Excerpt from Romance by Edgar Allan Poe.

Part 2 of 2.

But

now my soul hath too much room—
Gone are the glory and the gloom—
The black hath mellow'd into gray,
And all the fires are fading away.

My draught of passion hath been deep—
I revell'd, and I now would sleep—
And after drunkenness of soul
Succeeds the glories of the bowl—
An idle longing night and day
To dream my very life away.

But dreams—of those who dream as I,
Aspiringly, are damned, and die:
Yet should I swear I mean alone,
By notes so very shrilly blown,
To break upon Time's monotone,
While yet my vapid joy and grief
Are tintless of the yellow leaf—
Why not an imp the greybeard hath,
Will shake his shadow in my path—
And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook
Connivingly my dreaming-book.