Most poems about suffering want sympathy. Edgar Allan Poe's "To----" spends eight short lines asking for the opposite. The speaker lists everything he claims not to mind: a life with "little of Earth in it," years of love wiped out "in the hatred of a minute," even the fact that people who are "desolate" are better off than he is. Then the poem turns. What he cannot bear is that "_you_ sorrow for _my_ fate." His own pain is bearable. Someone else's pain on his account is not.
The poem's construction makes this reversal work. The first six lines are built on denial, with "I heed not" and then "I mourn not." The second verb is heavier than the first, so the speaker seems to be piling up evidence of his toughness. The "But" at the start of line 7 is the hinge. Everything before it now reads differently, as a man clearing the ground before admitting the one thing that gets through. The italics on _you_ and _my_ carry the emotional weight. The poem pivots on two pronouns, the beloved's sorrow set against the speaker's fate.
The details reward a slower look. "Hath--little of Earth in it" is one of the strangest phrases in the poem. The dash makes the speaker seem to pause and choose his words, and the capital "E" turns Earth into a place he only partly belongs to. He doesn't say what is wrong with his life, so the line suggests isolation or difference without explaining it. The contrast between "years of love" and "a minute" of hatred sets a long span against a flash, and "forgot" is passive, so nobody is named or blamed. Judging by the imagery, there has been a quarrel, but the poem gives no facts, and that vagueness lets the loss feel quiet. The third denial is the most paradoxical. If the desolate, who have lost everything, are "happier" than he is, then he has fallen below desolation. He announces this in a tone of calm dismissal. Tucked into the middle of that line, between commas, is the word "sweet," the only endearment in the poem. It is easy to skim past, which suits a speaker who is trying to hide his tenderness.
The sound of the poem works the same way. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD (lot/forgot, it/minute, desolate/fate, I/by), and the lines alternate between longer and shorter. Odd lines run four beats ("I heed not that my earthly lot") and even lines run three. That pattern gives the poem a ballad-like pulse, but the shorter lines feel clipped, like a breath caught. The rhymes "it" and "minute" are soft and unstressed, so those lines trail off, as the hatred of a minute itself evaporates. The ending is firmer. "I" and "by" close the poem on stressed, open sounds, and the last line, "Who am a passer-by," is one of the shortest in the poem. The speaker shrinks himself to a figure who is only passing through. This also echoes the opening idea of a life with little of Earth in it, so a man who barely belongs to the world is asking not to be mourned.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it holds in so little space. Poe is best known for tales and poems of dread and loss, such as "The Raven," but this poem is restrained, with no spectral visitor and no melodrama. The addressee is a blank ("To----"), so the situation is left open and any reader can step into it. The central irony is that the claim of indifference gives the speaker away. A person who truly did not care would not list his losses so exactly, and the final line suggests that his real concern is for the beloved. Calling himself a "passer-by" can be read as humility, bitterness, or an act of kindness, an attempt to convince her that he isn't worth her sorrow. The poem never says which, and that uncertainty is what keeps it open.