Alone Review & We Wear The Mask Review

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.

Edgar Allan Poe 

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We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence Dunbar


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These poems are the other two poems i am doing for my poetry out loud project, they have a similar message which is a question "Why cant the world see me for what i am/can do?" and I believe that is a struggle that we all as people face, we wish we could do better and be better for the people in our lives. As an adult man if you have children you struggle to be better for them to teach them what you feel they should know.
These poems express the idea that they are alone but can live with a mask. In the poem by Poe he excepted it and lived with knowing he couldn't be lov'd in return by the one he was fascinated with,
in we wear the mask he mentions that the world sees them, but not as they want them to be seen so he feels his survival only relies on himself.