Childhood’s Hour

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Edgar Allan Poe tells us several things about his childhood in a few of his poems.  Most importantly, in “Alone” (1829), Poe tells us that,

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

Poe was a sensitive and precocious child.  In “Romance” (1829), he describes his boyhood self as, “A child — with a most knowing eye.” His intellect and insights, however, made Poe feel different.  He saw the world differently from the way others saw it.  Again, in “Alone,” he tells us that, “From childhood’s hour I have not been / As others were — I have not seen / As others saw.”

Poe describes his childhood as tempestuous —perhaps, even, volatile — charged with heartfelt passion.  In “Dreams” (1827), Poe describes his heart as “A chaos of deep passion, from his [i.e. his own] birth.”  In “Tamerlane” (also from 1827), Poe writes, “My passions, from that hapless hour [i.e. childhood], / Usurp’d a tyranny, which men / Have deem’d, since … / My innate nature.”  In his adulthood, Poe tells us, people assume that this impassioned character is part of his “innate nature,” but during his childhood, he insists, his passions “Burn’d with a still intenser glow.”

Yet, at this idyllic stage of his life, before confronting his criteria with the criteria of the world, before having to make those choices, Poe was happy.  It is a happiness that will later seem incredible to Poe, to the point that he will wonder if it were only a dream.  In “Dreams,” he waxes:

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! 
My spirit not awak’ning, till the beam 
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow …

I have been happy, tho’ in a dream. 
I have been happy — and I love the theme …

What happened?  Perhaps, boyhood passed and the intensity of his passions subsided.  In “Tamerlane,” Poe explains: “For passion must with youth expire.”  And eventually Poe comes to lament (also in “Tamerlane”) that

boyhood is a summer sun 
Whose waning is the dreariest one …

And so, this sets up one of the major themes in Poe’s poetry: the nostalgia for the unadulterated happiness of his boyhood and youth, and a general dismal outlook about what follows.  In fact, in 1827, when Poe is all of eighteen years old, he has seen enough of life to declare (in “The Happiest Day”):

The happiest day — the happiest hour 
My sear’d and blighted heart hath known, 
The highest hope of pride, and power, 
I feel hath flown.

We will have more to say about what follows, but for now, we begin with these manifold clues from Poe himself about where we need to look to unravel the mystery of his life and his “blighted heart.”

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