Text: John E. Reilly, “Mrs. Whitman's Poems to Poe,” Poe in Imaginative Literature, dissertation, 1965, pp. 185-203 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 185:]

Poe is known to have had an interest in Sarah Helen Whitman for several years prior to their first meeting in 1848.(1) He had learned a great deal about her from mutual friends and had even caught a glimpse of her late one night in Providence, Rhode Island, in the summer of 1845. In 1846 he sent her a copy of his critical review of Elizabeth Barrett's Drama of Exile and Other Poems. If this was a bid for friendship, it failed. Mrs. Whitman made no response at the time. When she did respond, it was by means of a poem, the first of approximately eighteen that she devoted to him between 1848 and 1870. Of the eighteen, six were addressed to him during his lifetime. He reciprocated with only two: one resurrection and one original, both of which are entitled “To Helen.”

Mrs. Whitman's first poem to Poe was an anonymous message recited at Anne Lynch's valentine party for 1848. It was an occasion similar to the one two years earlier when Poe's acrostic to Mrs. Osgood was delivered. At Miss Lynch's request, Mrs. Whitman submitted valentines to be read as a part of the entertainment. Although Poe's name was not among the victims suggested by Miss Lynch, Mrs. Whitman seized the opportunity to address herself to him in verse, confessing that his works had had a haunting effect upon her and that she [page 186:] considered him to be a man apart from other men, a man who transcends the sordid materialism of their age. Her message, replete with allusions to his work, concludes with and invitation that could be interpreted as a hand proffered either in friendship or in marriage:

Poe was neither present at the party nor was he likely welcome; yet someone, possibly Mrs. Osgood and Miss Lynch, sent him a copy of the poem in Mrs. Whitman's hand and dated “Providence, R. I., Feb. 14.” Recognizing the author, Poe received it, he later confessed, with “wondering, unbelieving joy.”(3) And someone, perhaps Poe himself, prevailed upon N. P. Willis to publish the valentine in his Home Journal, where it appeared as “To Edgar A. Poe” on March 18 with the editorial note that it was a poem “by one of America's most justly distinguished poestesses” the “intrinsic beauty” of which “takes it quite out of the category of ordinary Valentines.” [page 188:]

Poe answered Mrs. Whitman's invitation to share her “lofty eyrie” with a copy of his lyric “To Helen,” composed many years earlier under the inspiration of Jane Stanard. Then he sent her an original poem, also entitled “To Helen,” giving a romanticized account of the episode several years before when he had caught a glimpse of her. However, no further encouragement was forthcoming from Providence. Early in July Poe met Mrs. Nancy Locke Heywood Richmond (his “Annie”) in Lowell, Massachusetts; and later that month he journeyed to Richmond, Virginia. Perhaps fearing that her silence had starved Poe's interest in her, Mrs. Whitman addressed a twelve-line poem to him which he received in Richmond:

Although these lines were unsigned, Poe could not have mistaken the author because the last four words are quoted from his unpublished poem to her.

The verses were sufficient to revive Poe's interest. He returned to New York immediately, obtained a letter of introduction, and before [page 189:] the end of September, 1848, was at Mrs. Whitman's home beseeching her hand in marriage. Even if they had been left entirely to their own devices, the courtship of these two middle-aged, temperamental poets would not have been a placid one, but Poe's enemies both in New York and in New England aggravated the tempest by seizing every opportunity to interfere. In a letter to John H. Ingram many years later, Mrs. Whitman acknowledged this interference and explained how it gave rise to one of her poems to Poe:

Mrs. Whitman must have sent two versions of the poem to Poe within the next two weeks, for on November 26 he asked her why she had “omitted the two forcible lines —

— is that dawn no longer perceptible?”(6) Mrs. Whitman has identified the text of the original poem to be that published in the 1853 edition cf her works:

Before Poe left for New York on November 13, he obtained Mrs. Whitman's promise of marriage. Accordingly, he returned to Providence on December 20 for the ceremony. Three days later, however, he was on his way back to Fordham alone. His departure from Providence had been a stormy one, and though it might then have had the appearance of only a temporary rupture, it proved to be, a final exit. The emotional intensity of the courtship enervated Poe, but he seems not to have [page 191:] regretted the loss of the poetess, for on January 21, 1849, he swore to his “Annie” that “from this day forth I shun the pestilential society of literary women.”(8) Although Mrs. Whitman seems to have been the one who hesitated about marriage while the courtship was in progress, her reaction to the rupture was quite the opposite to Poe's. While in Richmond in the summer of 1849, he is reported to have remarked that Mrs. Whitman “had made repeated efforts toward reconciliation.”(9) Since there is not record of any correspondence between them after January of 1849, Poe probably was alluding to two poems she addressed to him.

The first poem, “Stanzas for Music,” was published under Mrs. Whitman's name in the American Metropolitan Magazine for February of 1849. It is a cautious statement of her own attitude toward the rupture. She admits that they parted in anger and that she experienced sorrow when he left her. She does not, however, blame either herself or Poe. Instead she places the burden upon fate, or “doom.” Finally, as though reluctant to appeal directly to Poe, she addresses him through the agency of a third person:

The poem is essentially an adaptation of Poe's “To One in Paradise.” Mrs. Whitman's “lone island home” (a poetic rendering of the crowded living room in Rhode Island from which Poe took his leave) is a “green isle of the sea” in the original. Her “‘No more, never more’” is a paraphrase of Poe's “No more — no more — no more —.” And the sense of desolation in “To One in Paradise” is carried over whole into the adaptation.

Evidently Poe remained silent, and in March Mrs. Whitman devoted another poem to him, one much less cautious in its expression of her feelings than “Stanzas for Music.” In this poem, entitled simply “Lines,” she addresses Poe directly, assumes the burden of responsibility for his departure, and makes a forthright avowal of her love for him. The poem was published under her name in the Southern Literary Messenger for June and was dated “Isle of Rhodes, March 1849”:

In spite of her poetic appeals, Poe still made no effort to revive their courtship. He revived instead his early romance with Elmira Royster, now the widow Shelton of Richmond. When Mrs. Whitman addressed her next poem to him, she seems to have realized that additional efforts to regain him would be futile. This realization brought not bitterness but what she called “a resigned and passionaless [[passionless]] despair.” Entitled “Lines,” the poem was first published in Graham's for November of 1849, the month after Poe's death, but it was written in September, the anniversary month of their first meeting:

The “September day” Mrs. Whitman celebrates in this poem is a synthetic occasion created out of Poe's stormy departure from her living room on December 23, 1848, and a tranquil stroll they had taken along the banks of the Seekonk River on his first visit with her three months earlier.(13) This synthesizing is a kind of tampering with time and place, and it represents a step in the process of sublimation whereby Mrs. Whitman was to translate the frustrated courtship into a spiritual union with Poe that transcended or destroyed time, place, and even death. Before she could address another poem to him, Poe was dead.

After Poe's death, Mrs. Whitman's attitude toward him was conditioned by her growing interest in Spiritualism. Poe seems to have had a hand in the development of this interest. His letters to her in the autumn of 1848 make allusions to the part Fate played in their association, [page 195:] to the possibility that occult forces controlled their common destiny.(14) “In her relations with Poe,” one of her biographers has observed,

As a result of her Spiritualism, Poe's death signified to Mrs. Whitman not a termination but an intensification of her personal association with him. She believed that death brought his spirit closer to her, permitted him to appreciate the true extent of her love for him, and enabled her to look forward to the moment when her death would unite them in eternity.

Spiritualism pervades most of the poems Mrs. Whitman devoted to Poe after his death and several of the revisions she made in verse she had addressed to him before October of 1849. Her first reaction to his death is recorded in “The Phantom Voice,” a poem written in November of 1849 and published in Graham's for January of 1850.(16) She took the title from a passage in Poe's Politian. The theme of “The Phantom Voice” is that Poe now survives for her as

She seeks “some solace,” but she does so “in vain” because the melody comes to her even in “the voices of the silence — / The whisper of the dark”: [page 196:]

Although “The Phantom Voice” characterizes the restraint with which Mrs. Whitman received tidings of Poe's death, it does not reflect her Spiritualist convictions because it dwells upon “remembrances,” upon things past, and not upon the vitality of her association with Poe's spirit. “Resurgemus,” the second poem she devoted to Poe after his death, does reflect this vitality. Entitled “To Him ‘Whose Heart-Strings Were a Lute’” when originally published in a memorial volume to Mrs. Osgood issued in 1850, “Resurgemus” does not mourn Poe's passing but hails it as a release:

Poe's life was fraught with “doubt and darkness.” “Few were the hearts,” Mrs. Whitman continues obviously alluding to herself, who understood the music of his “weird harp,” who learned the “mystic language” of his eyes, or who knew

The closing stanzas of “Resurgemus” reveal the aura of sanctity Mrs. Whitman cast over her association with Poe's spirit: she will keep a vigil for him at the shrine that is his tomb until her death enables them to be united:

Similarly, Mrs. Whitman revised two poems she had written before October of 1849 to adapt them to the circumstances of Poe's death and her longing to unite her spirit with his. One of them was the poem on Arcturus written on that hectic evening in November of 1848. The revised form appeared in Graham's for June of 1850 as “To Arcturus.”(18) The other poem was “Stanzas for Music,” originally printed in the American Metropolitan Magazine for January of 1849. It was revised [page 198:] twice, appearing as “Stanzas” in Graham's for November of 1851 and for May of the following year.(19)

In 1853 Mrs. Whitman addressed two poems to Poe in the Shekinah, a Spiritualist magazine. They appear together under the title “To Aldalgon.”(20) Although neither poem mentions him by name; Poe is obviously the person addressed. More conclusively, both poems became members of a numbered sequence addressed to him in Mrs Whitman's Hours of Life, and Other Poems,

1853.(21) Consisting of eighteen lines, the first of the “To Aldalgon” poems recalls the moment when Mrs. Whitman looked into Poe's “glorious eyes. There she saw in “mystic vision” the dim suggestion of a pre-existence they had shared and the promise of their future reunion. Carrying over the allusion to Poe's eyes, the second poem, a sonnet, tells of dream experiences in which, like Una and Monos, Mrs. Whitman and the departed spirit of Poe now “Hold mystic converse on the life divine.”

Mrs. Whitman revised all her poems to Poe for the publication of Hours of Life, and Other Poems, 1853, the first collected edition of her verse. Some of the revisions were extensive. The valentine recited at Miss Lynch's soiree in February of 1848 and published in the Home Journal the following month lost its playful tone as a bid for Poe's friendship.(22) Altered in title from “To Edgar A. Poe” to “‘The Raven,’” it became a catalogue of the gloomy images evoked by Poe's poetry. “A Night in August,” the eight lines that reached Poe in [page 199:] Richmond in the summer of 1848 became a descriptive poem bearing little resemblance to the original and no connection whatsoever with Poe.(23) And the version of the Arcturus poem published in Graham's for June of 1850 was divided into “Arcturus. Written in October” and(24) “Arcturus. Written in April.” The first of these is the poem originally composed by Mrs. Whitman in 1848; the second consists essentially of the additions made for publication in Graham's in 1850. Other poems experienced scarcely more than changes in title. “Stanzas for Music,” the poem first appearing in the American Metropolitan Magazine, in February of 1849 and subsequently revised twice for publication in Graham's in 1851 and 1852, was given its final title, “Our Island of Dreams.”(25) Similarly, “Lines,” first printed in the Southern Literary Messenger for June of 1849 became “Song”;(26) and the poem written in September of 1849 and published in Graham's for November had its title altered from “Lines” to ‘’The Last Flowers.”(27) Essentially unchanged in content, “The Phantom Voice” retained its title,(28) and “To Him ‘Whose Heart-Strings Were a Lute”’ became “Resurgemus.”(29)

Hours of Life contains five new poems about Poe. In one of them, a sonnet entitled “Remembered Music,” Mrs. Whitman comforts her “lonely heart” ‘with the thought that Poe now, like his own Israfel, “Shall with glad seraphs sing, in God's great light.”(30) The other four new poems are the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth members of a numbered sequence of six sonnets surveying Mrs. Whitman's relationship; with [page 200:] Poe from the period before their first meeting, through their courtship and separation, to the projected union of their spirits in death.(31) The two remaining sonnets — the second and third members of the sequence — are the poems originally published together under the title “To Aldalgon” in the Shekinah. The first of the six sonnets expresses Mrs. Whitman's belief that even before she met Poe, he was her “Destiny,” her soul's “glory and its kingdom and its power.”(32) Sonnet II, a revision of the eighteen-line poem which originally appeared in the Shekinah, proceeds from Mrs. Whitman's confession of the influence Poe wielded over her from afar to the moment when she first looked into his “glorious eyes.”(33) Another allusion to Poe's eyes carries the thought of Sonnet II over to Sonnet III.(34) In spite of this smooth transition, however, Sonnet III does not fit comfortably into the sequence. It moves prematurely from the moment of Mrs. Whitman's first glimpse of Poe to a point in time after his death. This sonnet does not fit into the sequence because it is the second of the “To Aldalgon” poems in the Shekinah and was originally intended to terminate the idea introduced in Sonnet II. Returning to the sequence interrupted by Sonnet III, Sonnets IV and V advance from the moment when Mrs. Whitman met Poe to the stroll they took through the Swan Point Cemetery on his first visit with her in Providence in September of 1848.(35) In Sonnet IV, she recalls that Poe then professed his love and that she failed to respond, thus making him wait for death to [page 201:] reveal the extent of her feelings:

In Sonnet V, the stroll through the cemetery is made to represent the whole course of their abortive courtship. As in the poem she addressed to him in September of 1849, Mrs. Whitman creates a synthetic occasion by combining the events which occurred in the cemetery with Poe's stormy departure from her living room three months later. Unlike the earlier poem, which was written before Poe's death, this sonnet makes use of the atmosphere of the graveyard to fortify the paradox that for their love, life brought death and only death will bring life:

Sonnet VI closes the sequence in the manner of a peroration assuring Poe that Mrs. Whitman offers him the love for which he sought in vain while alive. The poem is particularly interesting for her association of Poe with Christ in the allusion to Gethsemane and for her suggestion, in keeping with a belief common among Spiritualists, that the spirit must undergo a form of purgation and progression wherein it is prepared for its ultimate bliss:

Mrs. Whitman's interest in Poe did not abate after the publication of Hours of Life. In 1860 she issued Edgar Poe and His Critics; and though it sometimes proved to be thankless effort and often threatened to involve her in the petty quarrels that arose among Poe's jealous biographers, she gave encouragement and assistance wherever she thought his life might be vindicated. Her attitude toward Poe evidently underwent a change, however. After 1853 she devoted only one poem to him. It was “The Portrait,” 1870.(37) This poem records a change in attitude. “After long years” she gazed once more upon “that face, magnetic as the morning's beam.” It “thrilled” her “slumbering memory,” but it did not evoke the intensely personal associations of her destiny with his that characterized the poetry she had addressed to him during the three or four years following his death, the expectation that she would share ‘eternity in union with him. Instead his destiny is now his own:

This change typifies not only Mrs. Whitman's attitude but the dearth of interest in Poe that prevailed toward the close of the 1860's. He was no longer the vital presence to those who had known him or a vital issue to those who had become embroiled in the heated controversy of the early 1850's. There was a revival at hand, however, and Mrs. Whitman prophesied it in the closing stanza to her poem:

Before “The Portrait” could be published in the collected edition of Mrs. Whitman's poems, 1879, she was dead and the name of Poe was already coming back to life.