Tynan Portillo presents, featuring the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the best horror stories from the 19th century. Welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Music and narration by Tynan Portillo. Please see trigger warnings in this episode description.

Today’s episode, the poem Lenore by Edgar Allan Poe.

Ah broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?--weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung!--
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young--
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
"And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her--that she died!
"How shall the ritual, then, be read?--the requiem how be sung
"By you--by yours, the evil eye,--by yours, the slanderous tongue
"That did to death the innocent that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel so wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride--
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes--
The life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes.

"Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
"But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days!
"Let no bell toll!--lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
"Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnéd Earth.
"To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven--
"From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven--
"From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven."

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This poem’s original title was “A Pean,” published in 1831. It was later republished in 1843, soon after Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe first started showing signs of contracting tuberculosis. Too many people in Edgar Allan Poe’s life had already been taken by tuberculosis and he knew all the tell-tale signs, as well as the certain death sentence it was. This poem a beautiful articulation of the conflicting emotions in the grieving process when it comes to dealing with death. Let’s dive into the poetic elements of Guy De Vere’s grief.

Something that makes this poem feel and sound tragic is Poe’s use of assonance (yes, that’s how you say it). It’s the repetition of the same vowels in a sentence. The opening of this poem says, “Ah broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!” Let’s look at the vowels in that line. What do you hear? “Ah,” but no exclamation mark, which means it’s not excitement or revelation, it’s in mourning. Then it’s followed by a series of words with a long O vowel: broken, golden, bowl and flown. “Oh” sounds like crying or moaning. So by the first line of this poem, we hear a moaning in the Chorus’ voice. And the stanzas take on the form of a chorus speaking to the man Guy De Vere, separated by quotation marks when Guy speaks to the chorus. The chorus coerces Guy to begin funeral rites for his dead love Lenore.

In the second stanza we hear a response from Guy De Vere. He immediately calls the chorus “wretches” and exposes their hypocrisy, explaining that they never knew or loved Lenore for who she truly was. In fact he blames them and their behavior for Lenore’s death, their evil eyes and slanderous tongues, painting them as envious devils out to corrupt Lenore.

By the third stanza the chorus states in Latin that they have sinned and they want to aid Lenore’s soul to Heaven. But Guy comes back in the fourth stanza and says “Avaunt” - go away! He’s not singing any dirge, a lament for the dead. No, he will sing a Pean, a song of praise, a celebration of Lenore’s life to help her soul to Heaven! Her soul is riven, violently torn, from the fiends of Hell to be brought to the high estate and golden throne of Heaven.

There is such anger in those last words of Guy De Vere. It sounds like he’s trying to defy the chorus. As someone who recently lost a loved one and wrote my own poem about how angry it made me, I can relate to Guy De Vere in that way.

This poem made me ask a separate question: why did Edgar Allan Poe like the name Lenore? Well, Poe most likely derived it from a famous German poem, also titled Lenore, written by Gottfried August Bürger. That poem features a grieving woman visited by the spirit of her dead husband, revealed to be Death, who takes her on a midnight ride to join him. That poem was incredibly influential to the entire Gothic movement in literature. It makes too much sense why Poe had a special connection to that name.

The beauty of this poem truly lies in its human truth: death sucks, and it makes us angry. Why should we have to learn to live with death? That’s not fair. But we’re all forced to deal with it anyway. Such pain creates beauty, I think. Memories of those we love are made more precious by their passing. And it makes us appreciate the breaths we take today. But inevitably we are animals and we take life for granted sometimes. You know it’s like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats part of a poison fish at a sushi restaurant. He rushes to do things he loves and sits down to die…and, spoiler alert but, after he is revealed to be alive he pledges to live life to the fullest! And credits play as he eats chips on the couch. We just lose sight of life’s gifts until they’re in danger.

Anyway.

Despite Poe’s death over 177 years ago, he remains immortal to us. Not because we all personally knew him, but because he knew how to speak to the human spirit.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Poe Show. Please subscribe, like, share and follow on TikTok, Spotify, YouTube and more. Comment which story or poem by Edgar Allan Poe speaks to your spirit the most.

That’s all for now. But I hope to talk to you again, on the next episode of The Poe Show.