"Romance" first appeared as "Preface" in the 1829 collection Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems then, in 1831, as "Introduction" in Poems By Edgar A. Poe.

It took the title "Romance" in the February 25, 1843 issue of the Philadelphia Saturday Museum. The early versions made some allusion to alcohol with lines like, "drunkenness of the soul" and "the glories of the bowl." In the poem, the speaker refers to some exotic bird that has been with him his whole life.

He also says, "I could not love except where Death / Was mingling his with Beauty's breath," a line often termed autobiographical as many of the women in Poe's love life were ill (an early love Jane Stanard died of tuberculosis, as did his wife Virginia; also, his later love Sarah Helen Whitman had a weak heart, etc.).

Read by Ken Moss.

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