From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain.
But in some of the lines the pauses of punctuation do not come at the right points to make smooth reading:
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.
The semicolon after "sorrow" should have come at the end of the line instead of in the middle. Poe had not yet learned the secret of the rhythmic flow which we find in such perfection in "The Bells," for instance.
But in the last part of the poem we find a beauty of image and comparison that thrills us, and something of that strange, weird suggestiveness which was characteristic of all of Poe's poetry, the thing he has in common with no other poet.
This weird suggestiveness is found in still greater vividness in another poem entitled "The Lake." In this, besides, we see how Poe had a sort of fascination for the horrible. Notice how he says:
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight.
Here is the complete poem. The young student of poetry may study it for himself, and discover, if he can, its shortcomings, as we have pointed out the faults in the poem "Alone."
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less,—
So lovely was the loveliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody,—
Then,—ah, then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,—
A feeling not the jeweled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define,—
Nor Love—although the Love were thine.