Poem: Spirits of the Dead

Edgar Allan Poe is known for his gothic poetry, and this is one of my favorites. Spirits of the Dead perfectly blends together the human mourning and mysterious nature of death, with contemplations that come from long nights he spent sitting alone, surely remembering those he had loved and lost. I often think of Poe and what writing meant to him. He struggled financially all his life, just to be able to write. This poem tells me why he wrote.

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

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Chapters

• 0:30 Intro
• 0:35 Poem
• 2:34 Aftertalk
• 9:46 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 poem “Spirits of the Dead,” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,

   Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

   In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

The night, tho’ clear, shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down

From their high thrones in the heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

Now are visions ne’er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill,

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

Hello from The Poe Show, I’m your host Tynan Portillo. Before anything else, I have an announcement: The Poe Show YouTube channel has its first video up today (!), which is a review of the Netflix show The Fall of the House of Usher. Be sure to give that a watch today to see just how accurate the show is to Poe’s original works, only on The Poe Show YouTube channel. Link in the description.

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This poem, like many from Edgar Allan Poe, explores the nature of Death and the solemnity that the living have for it. And the most important detail of this poem is that the author is speaking directly to the reader! It’s not describing a city or an event or fictional characters; it almost seems to be striving to teach the reader about the spirits of the dead. Each idea is separated into its own stanza, seemingly representing a phase of some kind.

It states that you will - not that you may, but you will - contemplate the nature of death at one point and feel alone. This is an important time that no one else can interrupt, not one of all the crowd to pry into thine hour of secrecy. A scary situation then occurs: you are alone in silence and solitude. And you are prompted to stay silent, to stay in the reverence of the fragility of life and death. But it’s also comforting, because in the previous stanza, the reader is alone and now is surrounded by those they have lost in death. And the bit about the stars not looking down from their thrones demonstrates that there is a romanticized idea of death that needs to be challenged, or it will become a burning and a fever to you forever.

Now I had to research what the next stanza meant by “Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, visions ne’er to vanish.” And I read an analysis that had a pretty negative interpretation of it, and I have to say I disagree. The author of the analysis argues that the author is saying a soul is nothing more than memories, fading like a dew drop from the grass. I disagree because the poem specifies, “now are THOUGHTS thou shalt not banish, VISIONS ne’er to vanish, from THY SPIRIT shall they pass.” In my opinion, the poem is talking more about the questions that one asks about death being answered.

The thoughts we have of death, the visions we have of death, we can’t banish them from our minds because we are mortal - it’s in our nature to think about death. But there will be a time when all of those worries and thoughts shall eventually fade from us. Then the breath of God is still, implying that life is no longer present. And the mist upon the hill is a symbol and a token, signifying the innate perplexing essence that death leaves behind - a mystery of mysteries. That’s another reason why I disagree with that analysis I read, because the poem ends with mystery, it doesn’t strive to answer questions about death, in fact, it’s very similar to The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton in that way. The only definite thing about death in this poem is that it occurs, and that sometimes we flower it up so it doesn’t seem that bad.

Think about it this way: if you had a bad day, and you told someone any and all of the reasons why your day was bad, and their response was, “Well, you still got two hands and two feet, other people have it worse. Be grateful and make it a better day tomorrow.” And you’re either left there feeling guilty for your suffering, or you’re thinking, “Well, screw you too.”

I have a personal example of this.

I had a great grandmother, and I grew up around her, I worked in her garden, I talked with her and saw her a lot. And one day I got a text saying that she had died and my family was preparing her funeral. And I wasn’t exactly…very close with her, and I took the message smoothly. I mean she was like 96, it was on the horizon. But about 15 minutes later, I like putting a DVD in its case and I suddenly paused. And I realized that I would never see her again, that the last day I ever heard her voice and saw her face was past already. And I cried. Because I missed her.

And I can say that if anyone at that moment had said, “You should be happy she’s in a better place,” I wouldn’t have responded kindly to them. Because she may be in a better place, but I wasn’t.

Grief and channels of connection through suffering are entirely healthy and necessary to be able to live. And to cheapen that with a flowery idea, in the midst of experiencing the grief of loss is an insult. We need time. We need time to process our grief and our loss. Then, after we have time, we can come back and brighten up our worlds to our heart’s content. But as Poe always masterfully demonstrates in his poetry, we are connected to death and suffering, and we deserve to feel bad about that sometimes so we can feel good about life. Two worlds separated by a mist.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Poe Show, remember to like and subscribe. You can follow this podcast on Instagram and Threads at ThePoeShowPodcast and on TikTok at ThePoeShow. Subscribe on YouTube and be sure to watch that review of The Fall of the House of Usher and just how accurate it is to Edgar Allan Poe’s original works. That’s all for now, but you’ll hear from me again in the next episode of The Poe Show.