Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead: Thy soul shall find itself alone, ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone ... - Folkswitch: The Romantic Poets Meet Wyrd Folk

Poe’s Spirits of the Dead is a walk through the graveyard, a treatise on death by one in mourning.

The spirits of the dead live on in Poe’s poem, and surround you as you walk the alleys of tombstones. The feeling of loneliness one gets as you wander the graves, Poe reasons is without merit, for the dead all around you.

The time for spirits of the dead to walk again is the night, but night means something different to the dead. Whereas the stars that shine above fill the living with hope, to the dead are but faint red glows, devoid of the hope of escaping.

For the dead take their sorrows and concerns with them to the grave. There is no solace from the thought or memory which haunts you in life, in the afterlife. Instead you’re trapped in endless night with those thoughts, and eternity to carry the burden.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead

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.

III

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!

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