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Folkswitch: The Romantic Poets Meet Wyrd Folk

Folkswitch: The Romantic Poets Meet Wyrd Folk

The romantic poets set to music and video, traditional folk songs through the looking glass

Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead: Thy soul shall find itself alone, ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone …

Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead: Thy soul shall find itself alone, ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone …

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.

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead

I
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.
       II
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.
       IV
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.
       V
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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