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.
Edgar Allan Poe
I have a difficult time expressing the solitude I often feel as someone who is compelled by the dark matter of the universe. Poe was a man who seemed to lack human connection severely, a loneliness that drove him mad through the morgues and pits and catacombs of his mind. And yet through this disconnect with the "normal world" he was able to create some of the most astoundingly eerie and marrow-curdling lines, sharp tools of language that have come together and spearheaded those of us who, like him, so acutely feel the sinister embrace of the night and welcome it.
It seems somehow fitting that someone so true to the darkness inside himself, someone who surrendered to it above all else, can speak in such visceral words to so many to whom the outside world is but pale compared to the inner worlds of the mind.
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