Prediction (Continuation of a Poem)

Author's Note: This piece was in response to Edgar Allan Poe's poem, Alone. Although I have a very different poetry style than his, I focused more on connecting the ideas rather than the writing style. I also wrote a short response to illustrate why I said what I did. The part in italics is what I wrote, the rest was from 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.

It showed me a certain horrible scene,

Upon a seemingly invisible screen.

Though it scarred me for much of life,

It later led me to find my wife.

I realized that although the tragic pain,

The demon's efforts were not in vain.

They were only to protect me,

And keep me from falling into history.

And when this occurred to me,

It changed me very drastically.

Although it seems I'm free,

I sometimes consider trying to flee.

In my mind I hear the demon's cries,

Telling me to look into its eyes.

To this demon, I have a certain respect,

A belief that I adhere and protect.

Why should I stop and take a stand,

When the demon is the one holding my hand?

Leading me through life happily at last,

Keeping me from remembering my past.

At last I am not alone,

I've finally found a home.

Not one that I will soon forget,

Not one where I will fret.

But one where I shall stay,

And live away my every day.

***

The poem, "Alone", by Edgar Allan Poe is all about regret, sadness, and the overall feeling of being completely and utterly alone in childhood. At one point, it says, "… and all I loved, I loved alone." To me, this shows the complete despair that this poem is about. Imagine that you are really passionate about something, and everyone else hates it, no one agrees. You would be feeling like quite the outcast.

To help me write a continuation of this poem, I used specific lines from the original poem that really conveyed his true emotions to predict what might happen later in this person's life. One example is when it says, "… My sorrow I could not awaken." I used that phrase and several other lines into the story to come to the conclusion that he had no hope or faith that anything would get better for him. I predicted that when the demon came along, it would be the one thing he wouldn't be separated from; it would be a friend when there were no others.

Although it never directly references the fact that his life would get better when he grew up, he talked a lot about how his childhood was the problem. This made me believe that when the demon came along, his life would change for the better. The best supporting text for this belief was when he said, "From every depth of good and ill, the mystery that binds me still." This line was written to sound as though he was much more mature and happy, but also still thinks about that experience.

All these facts and others in the poem gave me enough supporting evidence to make a logical prediction about what would happen with the man and the demon. However, most of my supporting evidence gave me predictions, not because of the text that was in them, but because of how they were written. As Edgar Allan Poe said himself, "Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant." Although the writing style may not seem like the most trustworthy place to gain predictions, it may create the most vivid picture of the future. This vividness is mainly how I continued this poem with the most logical prediction in my ability.