THE STREETS OF BALTIMORE.
“Edgar A. Poe.—As the circumstances attendant upon the death of Poe are not generally known, it may be well to present the facts in connection with the following poem. Having occasion to pass through Baltimore a few days before his intended marriage with a lady of family and fortune in Virginia, Poe met with some of his old associates, who induced him to drink with them, although, as we are informed, he had entirely abstained for a year. This aroused the appetite which had so long slumbered within him, and in a short time he wandered forth into the street in a state of drunken delirium, and was found next morning literally dying from exposure. He was taken to a hospital, and on the 7th of October, 1849, at the age of thirty-eight, he closed his troubled life. The tortures and terrors of that night of suffering are vividly portrayed in the following poem, composed in spirit-life, and given by him through the mediumship of Miss Lizzie Doten, at the conclusion of her lecture in Baltimore, on Sunday evening, January 11, 1863.”—Banner of Light.
Woman weak, and woman mortal,
Through thy spirit’s open portal,
I would read the Runic record
Of mine earthly being o’er—
I would feel that fire returning,
Which within my soul was burning,
When my star was quenched in darkness,
Set, to rise on earth no more,
When I sank beneath life’s burden
In the streets of Baltimore!
O, those memories, sore and saddening!
O, that night of anguish maddening!
When my lone heart suffered shipwreck
On a demon-haunted shore—
When the fiends grew wild with laughter,
And the silence following after,
Was more awful and appalling
Than the cannons deadly roar—
Than the tramp of mighty armies
Through the streets of Baltimore!
Like a fiery serpent coiling,
Like a Maelstrom madly boiling,
Did this Phlegethon of fury
Sweep my shuddering spirit o’er!
Rushing onward, blindly reeling,
Tortured by intensest feeling—
Like Prometheus, when the vultures
Through his quivering vitals tore—
Swift I fled from death and darkness,
Through the streets of Baltimore!
No one near to save or love me!
No kind face to watch above me!
Though I heard the sound of footsteps,
Like the waves upon the shore,
Beating, beating, beating, beating!
Now advancing, now retreating—
With a dull and dreamy rhythm—
With a long, continuous roar—
Heard the sound of human footsteps,
In the streets of Baltimore!
There at length they found me lying,
Weak and ’wildered, sick and dying,
And my shattered wreck of being
To a kindly refuge bore!
But my woe was past enduring,
And my soul cast off its mooring,
Crying, as I floated outward,
“I am of the earth no more!
I have forfeited life’s blessing
In the streets of Baltimore!”
Where wast thou, O Power Eternal!
When the fiery fiend, infernal,
Beat me with his burning fasces,
Till I sank to rise no more?
O, was all my life-long error
Crowded in that night of terror?
Did my sin find expiation,
Which to judgment went before,
Summoned to a dread tribunal,
In the streets of Baltimore?
Nay, with deep, delirious pleasure,
I had drained my life’s full measure,
Till the fatal, fiery serpent,
Fed upon my being’s core!
Then with force and fire volcanic,
Summoning a strength Titanic,
Did I burst the bonds that bound me—
Battered down my being’s door;
Fled, and left my shattered dwelling
To the dust of Baltimore!
Gazing back without lamenting,
With no sorrowful repenting,
I can read my life’s sad story
In a light unknown before!
For there is no woe so dismal,
Not an evil so abysmal,
But a rainbow arch of glory
Spans the yawning chasm o’er!
And across that Bridge of Beauty
Did I pass from Baltimore!