God tends to give poets strong wills to drive their bodies, mainly because they need it — often abusing their health as systematically as they can. It’s Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), of course, who comes to the American mind. In 1829 he wrote a set of tetrameter couplets, already at age 20 looking back at his childhood and seeing his distance from other children and the ghosthounds that would chivy him into alcohol and an early grave. In “Alone,” he remembers that as a child he would look up at “the cloud that took the form… / Of a demon in my view”—proof, if proof were needed, that the haunting he felt was from the beginning.

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 lov’d—I lov’d alone— 
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— 
From the torrent, or the fountain— 
From the red cliff of the mountain— 
From the sun that ’round me roll’d 
In its autumn tint of gold— 
From the lightning in the sky 
As it pass’d 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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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by the Sun’s poetry editor, Joseph Bottum of Dakota State University, with the help of a North Carolina poet, Sally Thomas. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.