Lula Lowe Weeden was only a schoolgirl in Lynchburg, Virginia, when she wrote "Me Alone," publishing in the 1930s during the late currents of the Harlem Renaissance. That context matters: an African American girl's voice, often pushed to the margins, here speaks from the center of a small, strange miracle. The poem refuses to explain itself; it simply tells. That act of telling is itself a quiet assertion that her perspective deserves attention.
The story begins like an old nursery rhyme: "As I was going to town, / I saw a King and a Queen." Immediately ordinary life is interrupted by fairy tale. Weeden does not describe the king and queen as distant figures; they arrive with "such ringing of bells you never heard" and make "the clerks" run from stores. The town's everyday commerce is upended. But the speaker doesn't focus on pageantry; she insists, "You know how it was, Me alone." That phrase is ungrammatical, direct, and childlike. It could mean "I was by myself" or "only me" — or both. It introduces the poem's central tension: being one in a crowd and yet utterly separate.
The speaker stands "as the others were" until a voice says, "Oh! you little girl... The King wants you." Notice how the poem lingers on her fear: "I became frightened / Wondering what he had to say." The line breaks slow the moment. The king's desire turns out to be generous — an invitation to ride in his coach. Yet even the honor does not dissolve the refrain. The final lines — "He wanted me to ride in his coach, / I felt myself so much riding in a King's coach, / Me alone" — wrap the speaker in both elevation and solitude. "I felt myself so much" is exactly the kind of unpolished phrase a child would use to describe an emotion too large for adult grammar. The repeated "coach" closes the poem with a small rhyme-like echo, while "Me alone" lands as both awe and assertion.
Weeden's construction relies less on regular rhyme or meter than on rhythm and repetition. The opening "As I was going to town" has the swing of a folk song, but the lines then break unpredictably, like a child pausing to recall the important parts. The word "King" chimes with "ringing" early on, and the poem returns to the word "coach" as a kind of final punctuation. The lack of a strict rhyme scheme keeps the poem from sounding like a jingle; instead, the repetitions do the emotional work. The imagery stays concrete: bells, stores, clerks, a coach. There is no abstract lesson. The power of the poem comes from what it leaves unsaid — the girl's interior sense of being chosen, which cannot be fully shared with anyone else, hence "me alone."
That solitary feeling gives the poem its significance. On one level, it is a childhood fantasy about being lifted from the crowd by a royal figure. On another, it speaks to any reader who has felt suddenly visible, singled out, and a little afraid of what visibility might mean. Written by a young Black poet in the Jim Crow era, the vision of a king wanting a "little girl" to ride in his coach carries quiet weight. The speaker never boasts; instead, "Me alone" becomes a small declaration of selfhood. The crowd remains on the street, the bells ring for everyone, but only she climbs into the coach. That is the secret the poem tells — not that she became royal, but that she felt, for one surprising moment, completely herself.