Poem: The City in the Sea

Edgar Allan Poe wrote this creepy poem as a young man serving in the military. With its intense atmosphere and vivid details of the macabre surroundings describing this ghost town, it's possible he could have been writing about his own horrific experiences during his service. Come along and take a journey through the city in the sea.

Episode music and narration by Tynan Portillo. Intro music by Emmett Cooke on PremiumBeat.

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Chapters

• 0:31 Intro
• 0:34 Poem
• 3:45 Aftertalk
• 10:35 Farewell

Transcript

Tynan Portillo presents…featuring the best horror stories of the 19th century…welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Narrated by Tynan Portillo.

Today’s episode, the City in the Sea, by Edgar Allan Poe.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye—
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass—
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea—
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave—there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow—
The hours are breathing faint and low—
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

 Hello from The Poe Show, I’m your host Tynan Portillo. If you enjoy classic poetry, short stories, ghost stories and gothic tales then subscribe to this podcast, give it a good rating, and like and share the episode with your friends. And family. Whoever you want to, honestly, it always helps.

 Before we get into the Aftertalk we’ve got a fan mail message I’d like to mention, and if you’d like to message the podcast you can send an anonymous text message using the link in the description or email poeshowpod@gmail.com. Anyway, we have one message here that says, “I’ve been listening to your podcast and I’m really enjoying it. Have you thought about narrating The King in Yellow? I think it meets the podcast theme pretty well and I haven’t been able to find any narrators of your caliber who have done it yet.”

 Wow, well thank you very much, I am so glad you’re enjoying the podcast! I have heard of The King in Yellow, I know that that book is about a play that causes people to go insane after reading it. There's also a movie, In The Mouth of Madness, which is very similar. And The King in Yellow inspired other writers like HP Lovecraft to start diving into the weird cosmic horror. So I can definitely look into doing that for an episode, I don’t know  how soon it’ll be, but thank you so much for the request!

 Now let’s talk about The City in the Sea.

 Originally, this poem was published as “The Doomed City” in 1831, when Poe would have been only 22 years old, right around the time that he was court martialed and dismissed for neglecting his military duties and disobeying orders. Later, the poem was changed to “The City of Sin,” but since 1845 it has been known as The City in the Sea. Kind of gives it more finality, as the city is swallowed by the sea.

In this story, there is a city in the dim west that is ruled by Death - Death is like their God - and it’s fitting that it’s in the west because the sun sets in the west. It’s symbolic of this place having reached its end. And by the end of the poem, Hell comes forth to swallow up the city that Death has provided, and holds it in reverence. Which means this city was so evil that even Hell was like, “Okay, that’s enough. You’re done. You’ve done enough, good job.”

 This story certainly draws on some Biblical references, Poe is known for doing that a lot in his work, and it could very well be that what Poe is describing here is one of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Although, what’s interesting from an artistic point is that Poe never mentions people living in the city, or has any talk of what is happening in the city that makes it so evil. But the towers and spires are “Time-eaten” which means this place is old. Maybe nothing is happening right now, but what were the things that happened there, ever so long ago, before Death came to rule? And were they so evil that the place itself is now a memory of that pure evil?

 Considering Poe would have been 22 when this poem was first published, I think we can also see some examples of a young man figuring out his own writing style. There’s something called anaphora, which means that you intentionally repeat a certain section of what you’re writing or saying in order to add emphasis. Easy example: “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout…” that’s anaphora. And Poe is experimenting with this poetic tool in this poem, which he uses in later writings - hence the repetition of “Quoth the Raven, nevermore.”

 Water, in almost any literary sense, is symbolic for characters going through a baptism, becoming clean. But…water also has great destructive powers; it can create mud, whirlpools, tidal waves, tsunamis and floods. This poem seems to mimic the themes of Noah’s ark and the great flood - the sea coming to swallow up all the evil and take it away from this world. But there’s no rainbow in this story. See, the rainbow at the end of Noah’s story was the symbol of God’s promise that no matter how much He grew to hate humanity for their wickedness he would never try to wipe us all out again. But the only God in this poem is Death, and the only promise is oblivion.

 Now this next part is just a theory, it’s my own theory, but I think Poe might have been writing this poem as an allegory for his time at West Point. Poe had been serving in the military and actually flourishing for about 2 years. He rose to be a Sergeant Major for Artillery, transferred a couple times and had a good career. But at West Point, the pressure got so intense that he would write poetry insulting his superior officers and he eventually quit. I think it’s probable that Poe was actually writing about West Point and how he hoped it would be swallowed up by the sea because he hated it so much.

That's about it for the aftertalk that I've got for this episode because I just recently moved to a new place, so I am still getting settled. But you can expect regular episodes uploaded at regular times, the 7th and 21st of each month. And hey, if you guys want more episodes, let me know. You know, if you would listen to 3 or 4 episodes in a month then let me know. Email The Poe Show or send an anonymous text message or leave a comment on YouTube because I can do more. I can do more classic ghost stories, I can do more - I can feature more fairytales, I can feature more poetry. Let me know because I am totally willing to do that.

Thank you so much for joining me here today on The Poe Show, remember to like and subscribe for more content, give this podcast a good rating cause that will help immensely with exposing it to more people, leave a comment on The Poe Show YouTube channel, send a message using the link in the description, or you can email poeshowpod@gmail.com. The Poe Show is on Instagram @thepoeshowpodcast and TikTok @poeshowpodcast, follow on there to get updates about new episodes. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll talk to you again on the next episode of The Poe Show.