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 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
When looking at the imagery present in this poem, I noticed that the speaker often uses natural images. For example, the speaker portrays his childhood as a "dawn of a most stormy life" to suggest how his/her childhood was the beginning of a terrible events that were to arise. The poem's tone and this image suggests how the speaker feels saddened and isolated from the rest of society; they do not understand his/her passions. The speaker reveals more nature imagery by referring to his/her passions as "passions from a common spring;" the speaker feels is passions are "common" and not unusual for other people. Yet, the speaker feels troubled how he/she remains alone in society through the use of natural images.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that natural images were used to describe the speaker's isolation. I especially noticed it with water imagery: in addition to what Katherine said about not being able to take "passions from a common spring," the speaker also said that "from the same source [he had] not taken [his] sorrow." The word "source" has a double meaning--it refers to a natural image, the source of a river, and also the literal meaning, the place his sorrows came from. I think that since these images, springs and sources, are so universal and serene, the speaker was saying two things by choosing to include them. First, since his passions and sorrows were taken from different "sources" or "springs" than everyone elses, this shows that he was unable to relate to these universal natural images--common to places and people all around the world. Thus, he was unable to relate to the conventional passions and sorrows of mankind. This isolates him, just like one who has never seen nature is arguably isolated or deprived. Second, since water images are so serene, the speaker's inability to relate to them shows that the speaker's inability to connect with other people makes his life turbulent and unpleasant.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I noticed was that in the second half of the poem, starting with "From every depth of good and ill...", the lines that rhyme with each other (following the rhyme scheme of the rest of the poem) are always related. For example, "In its autumn tint of gold" describes the rhyming line that came before it: "From the sun that round me rolled." Although it was already clear that the autumn tint of gold describes the sun, the rhyme makes these two lines be linked together even more strongly. This is true for almost all of the second half of the poem; the only couplet that breaks is the last one: "(When the rest of Heaven was blue) / Of a demon in my view." Although I am unsure how these lines are related, the strong pattern of rhyme that connected the preceding couplets makes me think that they are. I think this is significant, and I was wondering what everyone else thinks these last two lines mean, and what is the connection between them?
Emma, I definitely do think there is a connection between the last two lines. What called to my attention most is the part that says a "Demon in my view". This stood out to me, because although, (as Katherine pointed out) the speaker uses intensive imagery, this was the only time I saw the speaker explicitly refer to one of the senses, in this case, specifically sight. The only other time in the poem that this is done is at the beginning: "As others were; I have not seen/As others saw; I could not bring". Here, I find it significant that at first the speaker is somewhat blind (which I interpret could be a symbol to ignorance) as he could not "see" as others. However, by the end, a "demon" comes into view. Could this mean that through the progression of the poem, the speaker has lost some ignorance of evil? I think this ties in to contrast with the rest of "Heaven" being blue-- (blue a color of innocence, also (not surprisingly) found in nature as water (which could be a purifying agent))-- he is no longer able to be blissfully blind in the innocent Heaven, once more showing that he is inevitably isolated.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a really good interpretation! What you said about being blind or innocent in Heaven and then aware of evil at the end makes a lot of sense. I think this can be seen additionally in the shift from peaceful water images (the spring and source at the beginning) to more focus on violent water images: storms. In the middle he calls his life "stormy" and at the end he precedes the introduction of the demon with the couplet, "From the thunder and the storm, / And the cloud that took the form." This suggests that for him, the water became violent, unlike the still, peaceful water that he felt everyone else drew their inspiration from. And from this, he was forced to face evil--the demon in his view.
ReplyDeleteEmma, to respond to your question about what others thought about the last two lines, I have a little bit different of an interpretation than Natalie. Natalie, you said that the speaker seems to be blind to the perspectives that others see and that is what makes them isolated. I, however, saw it as the speaker choosing to look at situations differently, in a more negative light. I saw the use of parentheses in "(When the rest of Heaven was blue)" to show that when the speaker is explaining to us, the audience, that when he saw clouds in the sky forming as "a demon in [his] view" that he knew what was really going on in the sky, it being peaceful and blue. By using the parentheses I thought that the speaker was trying to add in that even though he knew the "rest of Heaven was blue" that he was choosing to see only the negative aspects, which in this last section of the poem was the little cloud forming in the sky. Because he saw such evil in this small cloud forming even though the sky was still blue everywhere else, the speaker is showing that he has a completely different outlook than everyone else around him, which is what I believe makes him isolated, and ultimately "alone".
ReplyDeleteAlly D
I also noticed that there was a clear progression of ideas in throughout the poem. I thought that the first eight lines represented how he always felt like he was different that everyone surrounding him and that he also felt different emotions than the rest of his peers. When he says "Then- in my childhood, in the dawn of a most stormy life- was drawn" it is transitioning into his description of the rest of his life. I thought that he used lines 13-20 to describe how he constantly felt alone and unhappy because of that. But then the change of ton in the last three lines made me think that the point he was trying to get across was that he learned and became a better individual because he never fit in. He used the "demon", which I interpreted to be his inability to fit in with the crowd, and turned that into a positive characteristic. By accepting his uniqueness, he could be content with how he had turned out at the end of his life.
ReplyDeleteBridget B.