From Childhood's Hour
Edgar Allan Poe
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 or the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed my 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.
Some think he is creepy, but I have always liked Poe and for some reason his writing always draws me in. When I took a creative writing class my sophomore year of college, the teacher's last assignment for the class was for each one of us to pick a poem to memorize and recite in front of the class. This absolutely terrified me. Some may be surprised, but I was generally a quiet college student and I get pretty bad anxiety having to speak in front of a group of people. I did not answer questions in class. I did not care to be involved in class discussions. I was very content to attend class (I hardly missed), listen, take notes if needed, and basically figured out my assignments and work on my own. And just to be clear, me not answering questions had nothing to do with me not knowing the answer, because I usually did. It's just that if I was called on, I got the whole - rapid heart beating/sweaty palms/lack of voice package which I'm sure made me look like a complete idiot. So anyway, reciting a memorized poem in class was daunting. But it was a very neat experience to see everyone else do it and hear the poems they chose. And to this day I still remember the poem - or at least the beginning lines...
