Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.


This poem is one of my favourite of Poe's. It to me summarises the possible invocations of poetry - it can be used for solace, lament, reasoning, befuddlement, assessing the past, assessing the future, and looking at one's own position in the world. It is the ultimate in solipsism. To Poe this poem must have been the purgation of, or at least the confinement of, something which haunted him. It also shows the power of language - when I read poetry like this I can't help but think that, although I know all the words used, I could never produce something of such expression and beauty. It is the power of language to somehow produce something greater than the sum of its parts that fascinates me. This is part of the basis of poetry - anyone could conceivably string some words together, it is their effortless selection and deployment that singles out the great.

As for the 'demon in my view', I must say I think this is death, though there may be reasons to doubt this. Poe seems to question everything around him, to draw the entire physical plane before him. This is typical of someone who does not understand how they fit into the world (as an aside, anyone who does understand how they fit into the world does not understand how they fit into the world). He summons images of permanence - rocks, mountains, the sun, and shows how they 'rolled' around him. Stage 4 existential crisis if it ever existed. The self-loathing and plaintive tone makes this such a Poe poem, and also such a Romantic poem. I could imagine something very similar being written by any other Romantic poet.

Poe actually wrote that 'out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been,' and this sentiment imbues the poem.

And before I depart, I love the movement from iambic tetrameter to trochaic tetrameter after 'The mystery which binds me still:', which somehow seems meaningful. Certainly it emphasises division and the feeling of loneliness.