Tuesday, October 27, 2009

From childhood's hour...

I was thinking the other day about why we love Halloween, and how that love began in childhood and strengthens for many of us through the years. And I thought of how perfectly these two pieces, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Alone" and Tim Burton's 1982 short animated film "Vincent," illustrate that childhood love, that bent, for the dark.




Alone
By 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 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.


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