Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “Alone” (reprint) Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Didier, ed., New York, W. J. Widdleton), 1877, p. 248


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[page 248:]

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 lov'd, I lov'd alone.

Then — in my childhood — in the dawn

Of a most stormy life — was drawn

From ev’ry 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 roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold —

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass'd 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.


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Notes:

Poe wrote this poem in the autograph album of Lucy Holmes, later Lucy Holmes Balderston. In interpreting the manuscript, Didier made a number of changes in punctuation, mostly replacing dashes with commas, semicolons or periods.


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[S:1 - Poems-Dideir, 1877] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - Alone [reprint]