Than ever had greeted our sight—
Our sin-blinded, death-darkened sight;
And they sang: “Welcome home to the Kingdom,
Ye earth-born and serpent-beguiled;
The Lord is the light of this Kingdom,
And His temple the heart of a child—
Of a trustful and teachable child.
Ye are born to the life of the Kingdom—
Receive, and believe, as a child.”
Another long poem, entitled “Farewell to Earth,” was delivered by Miss Lizzie Doten at the conclusion of a Lecture at Clinton Hall, New York; it purported to be E. A. Poe’s final “Farewell to this World.” It was printed in Number 2 of Inspirational Poems, and published by F. N. Broderick, 1, St. Thomas’s Square, Ryde, Isle of Wight, for the small price of one penny; alas! it was dear at that. But the culmination of absurdity is to be found in a book entitled Improvisations from the Spirit, published in London in 1857. This ridiculous work was the production of Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, a rather well known character in St. John’s Wood about thirty years ago. If we are to credit this author, the 400 closely printed pages of this curious jumble of clerical cant terms, spiritualism, and Swedenborgianism, were written under a kind of inspiration. Since August 1857 the inspired volume had rested undisturbed on the library shelves of the British Museum, nor had any sacrilegious paperknife disturbed its uncut edges until the Editor of Parodies assailed them. And there he found an “Imitation of E. A. Poe,” a mad kind of poem, a dribbling in rhyme, of which, one verse will surely be sufficient for even the most spiritualistic reader:—