Cummings Study Guide

.......Edgar Allan Poe's "Alone" is a lyric poem of twenty-two lines.The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore has provided the following information about its composition and publication:

.......Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Not long after his father abandoned his wife and Edgar, Mrs. Poe died. Edgar was left alone. A childless couple—John Allan, a successful businessman in Richmond, Va., and his wife—adopted Edgar. Allan was believed to be Poe’s godfather. At age six, Poe went to England and Scotland with the Allans and received schooling there.
.......After he returned with the Allans to the U.S. in 1820, he studied at private schools and then attended the University of Virginia for eleven months but had to withdraw because he incurred gambling debts that Allan refused to pay. When Edgar returned to Richmond, he discovered that the girl he loved had become engaged. After moving to Boston, he published several poems but lack of money forced him to join the army. Meanwhile, his foster mother died. Allan was able to help him enroll at West Point Military Academy, but Poe got himself expelled after refusing to attend classes and other activities.
.......Thereafter, Poe and his father became estranged, and Poe was once again without a family. However, he then began pursuing a writing career in New York, Baltimore, and Richmond and achieved some success but also began drinking heavily. His experiences and his temperament led him to focus on tales of horror and the grotesque and poems that often focus on death. Click here for additional biographical information.

Point of View

.......The speaker presents his thoughts in first-person point of view from the perspective of an adult looking back on his childhood.

Tone

.......The tone of the poem is somber and dark, reinforced by such words as sorrow, alone, stormy, thunder, and demon.

End Rhyme

.......The poem consists of eleven rhyming couplets. (A couplet is a pair of rhyming lines.) The first four lines demonstrate the rhyming pattern.

The first twelve lines of the poem are in iambic tetrameter. Lines 1-4 demonstrate the pattern.

.....1.................2...................3.............4
As OTH..|..ers WERE—..|..I HAVE..|..not SEEN

.....1.................2..................3...............4
As OTH..|..ers SAW—..|..I COULD..|..not BRING

.....1..................2..................3.................4
My PAS..|..sions FROM..|..a COM..|..mon SPRING—

FROM the..|..RED cliff..|..OF the..|..MOUN tain—

......1..................2.................3..................4
FROM the..|..SUN that..|..’ROUND me..|..ROLL'D
...1.............2...............3............4

IN its..|..AU tumn..|..TINT of..|..GOLD—

.......Since his childhood, the speaker says, he has been unlike others. His upbringing—his emotions—did not develop in a typical family setting. In fact, he was alone most of the time, a melancholy child. Everything he loved, he says, he loved alone. His temperament and personality came from every "depth of good and ill" (line 11) around him—from violent torrents and calm fountains, from red cliffs, the sun, lightning, thunder, and a cloud shaped like a demon.

Text

From childhood’s hour¹I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring²—
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.

Notes

1.....hour: Years of childhood.
2.....common spring: The experiences that everyone else draws upon.
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.......Being alone as a child can lead to a "stormy life" shaped by both good and bad influences.

..

Figures of Speech

Anaphora

.......Poe frequently uses anaphora, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of a clause or another group of words. Anaphora imparts emphasis and balance. Here are boldfaced examples from "Alone":

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—

.......Following are examples of other figures of speech from the poem. For definitions of figures of speech, see Literary Terms.

Alliteration

As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring

From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken

From the torrent, or the fountain—

.......Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. After being orphaned at age two, he was taken into the home of a childless couple—John Allan, a successful businessman in Richmond, Va., and his wife. Allan was believed to be Poe’s godfather. At age six, Poe went to England with the Allans and was enrolled in schools there. After he returned with the Allans to the U.S. in 1820, he studied at private schools, then attended the University of Virginia and the U.S. Military Academy, but did not complete studies at either school.
.......After beginning his literary career as a poet and prose writer, he married his young cousin, Virginia Clemm. He worked for several magazines and joined the staff of the New York Mirror newspaper in 1844. All the while, he was battling a drinking problem. After the Mirror published his poem “The Raven” in January 1845, Poe achieved national and international fame. Besides pioneering the development of the short story, Poe invented the format for the detective story as we know it today. He also was an outstanding literary critic.
.......Despite the acclaim he received, Poe was never really happy because of his drinking and because of the deaths of several people close to him, including his wife in 1847. He frequently had trouble paying his debts. It is believed that heavy drinking was a contributing cause of his death in Baltimore on October 7, 1849.

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• Write an essay that focuses on the good and ill (line 11) that influenced Poe.
• Write a short poem about yourself. Use rhyming couplets throughout.
• Everyone has good and bad sides, as Poe did. Tell your class about how your bad side once got you into trouble—or about how your good side helped another person or rewarded you in some way.
• Most of the couplets in the poem have masculine rhyme, in which only the final syllable of one line rhymes with the final syllable of another line. Other couplets have feminine rhyme. Define feminine rhyme and identify the two examples of it in the poem.

DVD
Murders in the Rue Morgue, Black Cat, Other Tales

Book
Complete Stories and Poems

DVD
Cask of Amontillado, Tell-Tale Heart

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