Alone

-Edgar Allen 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 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.

     
I have always loved this poem, from the time I stumbled upon it in a book in highschool.  I think what drew me in were the very first lines "From childhood's hour I have not been / as others were; I have not seen / As others saw."  Such lines are, to me, emotionally charged and full of energy as a result of thier honesty--a speaker who can admit to himself and an audience that he is, essentially, an outcast is a powerful individual.