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Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "Alone [To ---- 'I heed not . . .']" (A), "Wilmer" manuscript collection, about 1828




Alone
1

O! I care not that my earthly lot
    Hath — little of Earth in it —
That years of love have been forgot
    In the fever of a minute —

2

I heed not that the desolate
    Are happier, sweet, than I —
But that you meddle with my fate
    Who am a passer-by.

3

I heed not that my founts of bliss
    Be gushing, oh! with tears
That the tremor of one kiss
    Hath palsied many years —

4

‘T is not that the flowers of twenty springs
    Which have wither'd as they rose
Lie dead on my heart-strings
    With the weight of an age of snows.

5

Nor that the grass — O! may it thrive!
    On my grave is growing or grown —
But that, while I am dead and alive
    I cannot be, love, alone.








Notes:

This present text was at one time in the manuscript collection owned by Lambert A. Wilmer. Unfortunately, this poem was one of a few which no longer appear to survive in manuscript form. These now missing poems are presumed lost, but were were recorded by G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman and subsequently printed in their collection of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1895-1896). Mabbott (Poems, 1:582) briefly discusses the manuscript. There is no specific comment by Woodberry and Stedman as to whether or not the stanzas are numbered, but with the absence of such a statement, it will be assumed that they appeared as they did when printed in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829)





 
[S:1 - WMS, 1828, (SW 1895)] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - Alone [To ---- 'I heed not . . .'] (A)