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Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Faculdade de Letras
Introdução às Literaturas de Língua Inglesa

d
 as a reflection of Edgar Allan Poe¶s life

Professor: Marcel Lima

Alumni: Thalita de Carvalho Pereira

Belo Horizonte/MG
2011
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³Hymn´ as a reflection of Edgar Allan Poe¶s life

The poem ³Hymn´ is not one of the most known poems by Edgar Allan Poe, but

it conveys elements that allow us to relate it to his personal circumstances in

life, elements which will be presented in this essay.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American Romantic poet of the nineteenth century

whose life¶s ambition was to be renowned as a poet, but had to resort to other

kinds of writing in order to support himself. He was born in Boston,

Massachusetts, 7 October 1809, became orphaned in 1811, and ³was taken

into the household of John Allan, a tobacco exporter of Richmond; he took his

foster-father¶s name from 1824 onward.´ (Drabble 1995 , p. 783).

In the first stanza of the poem, Poe lists the parts of the day: ³ ×








which we can also understand as the phases of life: childhood,

adulthood and the ageing phase. He sings to Maria that she has heard him in

good and in bad times and asks that she be with him still : ³




 


















  



 

   The good times of joy mentioned can be related to his youth when ³he was

much indulged, chiefly by Mrs. Allan [John¶s wife] and her sister, Nancy

Valentine, of whom Edgar retained fond memories.´ (Fisher 2008, p. 2). The

bad and ill times can be a reference to Mrs. Allan¶s death when Poe was

nineteen years old.

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The second stanza talks specifically about the past, as we can ascertain by

Poe¶s use of the simple past, for instance in the verse s: ³´ 

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×





 

 . In this stanza the poet is

speaking of good times he had in his life, that we can associate with the years

of a good relationship with John Allan, in which he had no financial troubles,

and also with his romantic attraction to his neighbour Sarah Elmira Royster.

However, this stanza also mentions the loss of the good times by means of

falling into temptation and his need of guidance: ³



 






 










  According to Newman, Pace and

Koenig-Woodyard (2006, p. 926), John Allan wanted Poe to take over his

business and, therefore, sent him to the University of Virginia where he studied

for a year and left after acquiring gambling debts that his foster father refused to

pay. While he was in college, spending his nights in gambling with fellow

students, his sweetheart, Sarah, married another man.

On the third stanza of the poem, the speaker talks about the present and his

hopes for the future. Now he is no longer living through the good times

described on the second stanza, but rather through dark times: ³
 

 



 

 


  



  Poe¶s life had many

moments of darkness, chiefly caused by financial problems after his rift with

John Allan who died in 1834 leaving nothing in his will for his foster son. The

poet also faced difficulties to publish his poems, leading him to turn to short

story writing. His life was also marked by ³dead and dying maternal presences´

(Newman, Pace and Koenig-Woodyeard 2006, p. 927), beginning with the

death of his own mother, followed by his fos ter mother¶s death and the demise
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of a friend¶s mother to whom he had grown attached, Mrs. Stanard. Later he

would face yet another female death when his wife, Virginia, died of

tuberculosis in 1847.

His hopes for a better future may be related with the prize awarded him by the

Baltimore Ë

  for his short story ³MS. Found in a Bottle´. According

to Fischer (2008, p. 5), one of the judges sympathized with Poe and helped him

to get a job at the Ë

 
 
   . The faith in a better future is

expressed in the poem ³Hymn, in the verses: ³








´ 

 



 

Thus we can see that ³Hymn´ presents many elements that allow us to establis h

a correlation between it and Edgar Allan Poe¶s life, though we cannot say for a

fact that it was written with this intention, since ³Poe is not the protagonist in

most of his poems (or in his tales).´ (Fischer 2008, p.32)

Poe¶s life had moments of brilliance and moments of gloominess, but that is not

an exclusivity of his life or a poet¶s life. We all have ups and downs throughout

our lives, maybe with different degrees and circumstances, but we all have it

just like Poe did.

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º
  

Drabble, M. (ed.) (1995) 





 

 . 5th ed.
New York. Oxford University Press.

Fischer, B. F. (2008) 


 

 


×
 . 1st ed.
New York. Cambridge University Press.

Newman, L., Pace, J. and Knoenig-Woodyard, C. (2006)   


 

×
× 

 
×



 


 . New York. Pearson Longman.

x
 


Hayes, K. J. (ed.) (2002) 






×
 . 1st

edition. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Head, D. (ed.) (2006) 






 


 . 3rd ed.
New York. Cambridge University Press.