"Alone"

Edgar Allan Poe has always been one of my favourite author-poets. He appeals to me even more when I'm in a blue or sombre mood. Not being a Literature student I'm not sure if the adjective Gothic could be applied to his oeuvre but it's certainly dark and, often, macabre. He may not be everyone's cup of tea, especially in this 'fast-food' era where reflection and contemplation are often sneered at as outdated and a waste of time. Yet I, perhaps out of step with the modern world, remain defiantly attached to such writing. I reproduce below a poem of his which is one of my personal favourites : Alone.


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.


As an aside, the last line was used by Ruth Rendell as the title of one of her best known murder mysteries, 'A Demon In My View'for which she won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger award in 1976.