Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

Ah in this landscape that trails shadows
my soul clutches an itchy terror
like a ship that has come from a harbor it has come
crossing the islands with wraiths in the distance
it's neither wind nor rain
all of it a dark fear clinging to the sufferings of love and lust
and at the dull flute-sound that a snake charmer makes
my crumbling shadow wept lonely.

But I felt them...hungry shadows who knew my name, clawing at my mind and my soul to be let in - and if I let them in there would be nothing left of me but skin; nothing but a shadow inside, like themselves. (By Moonlight)

For this dark and lonely room
Projects a shadow cast in gloom.
And my eyes are mirrors
Of the world outside.
Thinking of the way
That the wind can turn the tide.
And these shadows turn
From purple into grey.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more"

An anxiety for being me, forever trapped in myself, floods my whole being without finding a way out, shaping me into tenderness, fear, sorrow and desolation.
An inexplicable surfeit of absurd grief, a sorrow so lonely, so bereft, so metaphysically mine...

Wandering aimlessly, broken by my thoughts,
Which slowly sharpened daggers at my heart

Once I was a shadow of man. Most dark nights my head was in its hands.

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me.

No one knows what it is to lie here alone day after day, in silence and darkness, without hearing a voice or seeing a ray of light. Sad thoughts come over me, and I do not feel sometimes as if I could bear it any longer or as if it could ever be light again.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

And my heart senses tears
it's the heart that always plays quietly alone
the heart is lonesome
the heart, early in its youthful boyhood, cast a shadow on my life
the gradually enlarging shadow of solitude
the shadow of terrifying melancholy grows.