SPIRITUAL POEMS.
A very curious feature of the modern American press has been the rapid growth of so-called Spiritual literature. Those who are incredulous in regard to these Spiritual manifestations simply assert that a poetical medium is one, who not having sufficient genius and originality to make a name and a place in literature for himself, falls back on the trick of imitating the style of some deceased popular author, and proclaims his (often stupid) Parody the veritable production of the spirit of the author imitated. Perhaps it is owing to the known partiality entertained by Edgar A. Poe for alcohol during his lifetime, or it may be due to the ease with which his style of versification may be imitated, that his spirit has been so often invoked, and his name so frequently used by the Spiritualists.
Without attempting to discuss the mode in which these poems have been given to the world, it will be quite sufficient to quote a few, and these of the very best, to show that Poe’s Spirit has not produced anything at all equal in quality to the poems written by Poe whilst he was still in the flesh. Power, freshness, and originality they seem to lack entirely, but the quantity is superabundant; the chief difficulty in making a selection that shall be at once illustrative and interesting, is to avoid making it too voluminous. Few, indeed, of these poems possess the attributes of Poe’s style,—his luxurious reiteration of thought in similar lines,—his musical alliteration—his exquisite sense of rhyme. Here and there occurs a slight assumption of the mystical, but it is mere obscurity without suggestiveness. It is asserted that most of these Spiritual Poems were taken down from the lips of persons whilst in a state of trance.
One of the earliest Spirit Poems was said to be dictated through the medium of Mrs. Lydia Tenney, of George Town, Mass., U.S.A., and was triumphantly claimed as a proof that Poe’s Spirit had written a poem. Mr. William Sawyer utterly demolished this poem in an article in the Brighton Herald, and as it does not possess any resemblance to Poe’s style, it would be out of place here.
The first Spirit poem to be quoted is a sequel to “The Raven,” by a certain R. Allston Lavender, who asserted that it was dictated to him by the spirit of E. A. Poe. When last heard of Mr. Lavender was an inmate of a lunatic asylum in the United States.
Sequel to the Raven.
Fires within my brain were burning,
Scorning life, despairing, yearning,
Hopeless, blinded in my anguish;