1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes while accumulating a very considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the money he needed, and Poe soon began to gamble to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm.
Being humiliated by his poverty and being furious with Allan for not providing enough funds in the first place, Poe returned to Richmond and visited the home of his fiancée Elmira Royster, only to find out that she had become engaged to another man while he was gone.
Poe finally stormed out of the home in his quest to become a great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the first goal by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen, and to gain the second goal he enlisted in the United States Army. Two years later he heard that Frances Allan, the only mother he had ever known, was dying of tuberculosis and wanted to see him before she died. By the time Poe returned to Richmond she had already been buried. Poe and Allan briefly reconciled, and Allan helped Poe gain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Before West Point, Poe created more poetry. There, Poe was angered, surprised and offended that Mr. Allan had remarried without telling him or even inviting him to the ceremony. Afterwards, Poe wrote to Mr. Allan telling him all that he did wrong to him and threatening to get himself expelled from the school. After eight months, Poe was kicked out, but he published another book.
Now that he was broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore, his late father’s home, and asked for help from relatives in the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night, but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria Clemm, basically became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter Virginia first became a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon she became desired by him.
“There are two bodies — the rudimental and the complete ; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design."
“ 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. ” in 'Alone'
by Poe