Happy Birthday

It's hard to put in to words just how strongly I connect with the greatest American writer and poet of the 19th century - Edgar Allan Poe. A true master of words and weaver of fear in prose, it's perhaps Poe's poetry that really resonates with me the most. If you've never read any of his poetry, why not take a minute on your break from work to stop by the Barnes & Noble in the skyway and pick up a copy? It just may change your life. Happy birthday, good sir - you were a misunderstood genius gone before you time and you deserve to be toasted each year (I will be raising a pint in your honor tonight), even if the Poe Toaster is no more...

http://www.startribune.com/nation/114184339.html

One of my favorites:

ALONE

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.