Edgar Allan Poe or an Emo Band?

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a master of macabre, whose tales seeped into the darkest corners of the human psyche. Known for iconic works like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and the haunting poem “The Raven,” Poe’s literary canon is an exploration of shadowy realms and moral decadence.

If emo bands had existed during Poe’s era, he might have found kindred spirits in their melancholic expressions. The thematic overlap between Poe’s writing and the emo music scene is striking, filled with shared angst and brooding reflections.

Here are some lyrical lines—try to guess if they belong to Poe or an emo band:

• “And I know in my heart we all die / Like the day and the night / Like the sun in the sky”
• “And all I loved, I loved alone”
• “I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore”
• “Exhale, another wasted breath / Again it goes unnoticed”
• “Come, let the burial rite be read / The funeral song be sung / An anthem for the queenliest dead / That ever died so young”
• “… Years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute”
• “I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow”
• “Lay still, like the dead / From the razor to the rosary / We could lose ourselves / And paint these walls in pitchfork red”
• “Never to suffer would never to have been blessed”
• “And all of the corpses / Walk step by step / To the rhythm of their once beating hearts”
• “Deep in earth my love is lying / And I must weep alone”
• “Every moment of the night / Forever changing places / And they put out the starlight / With the breath from their pale faces”
• “Dressed in a fashion that’s fitting to the inconsistencies of my moods”
• “Leave my loneliness unbroken”
• “String from your tether unwinds / Up and outward to bind / I was spinning free / With a little sweet and simple numbing me”
• “Die young and save yourself”

Despite his darker notoriety, not all of Poe’s works embraced the Gothic gloom. He penned several poems celebrating beauty, such as “To Helen.” Other creations revealed his love for wordplay, like Vondervotteimittis in “The Devil in the Belfry,” cleverly named to mean “wonder what time it is.”

Poe’s life, however, was nearly as dark as his stories. His final moments were spent in a state of delirium; he was discovered incoherent and disoriented on a park bench in Baltimore. Shortly after, he passed away under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a legacy swathed in both genius and enigma.

Source: Mental Floss