Poe’s “Catholic Hymn”

Our Lady of Walsingham, which Poe may have seen in England as a child.

Of the approximately seventy poems penned by Edgar Allan Poe, only one contains an overtly religious motif, the remarkably Marian-themed “Hymn,” which reveals the powerful appeal of Marian spirituality over the most hopeless of hearts.

At morn–at noon–at twilight dim–

Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!

In joy and woe–in good and ill–

Mother of God, be with me still!

When the Hours flew brightly by,

And not a cloud obscured the sky,

My soul, lest it should truant be,

Thy grace did guide to thine and thee

Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast

Darkly my Present and my Past,

Let my future radiant shine

With sweet hopes of thee and thine.

The specification that the hymn is repeated at “morn,” “noon” and “twilight dim” refers to the recitation of the Angelus.  The “Hours” referenced are the Liturgy of the Hours, prayed eight times daily.  The last lines of the second and third quatrain reference “grace” and “hope.”  If there is any question of the Catholic sensibility of this poem published in 1845 as “Catholic Hymn,” no such doubt touches the earlier version which included this introductory quatrain:

Sancta Maria! turn thine eyes

Upon the sinner’s sacrifice

Of fervent prayer and humble love,

From thy holy throne above.

The sentiment reflected in the piece surprises, not only because Poe was raised Presbyterian and Episcopalian and was described by some of his contemporaries as an atheist, but also because an examination of his oeuvre reveals a bleak spiritual outlook.  In his poem “The Conqueror Worm,” Poe contemplates the great cosmic drama and declares that there is no afterlife: “The play is the tragedy, Man / And its hero the Conqueror Worm” (i.e., man is a tragic figure and the worms that consume his body “conquer” him).  In “The Coliseum,” Poe postulates that the oblivion befalling the Roman ruin bears “spells more sure than e’er Judæn king / Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane.”  And in his famous poem “The Raven,” he asks, “Is there balm in Gilead?” and his “prophetic” title bird succinctly answers, “Nevermore.”  A sense of foreboding, dread and horror famously pervades most of his work.[1]

Tragedy followed Poe all his life, beginning with the abandonment by his father when he was one year-old, and the death of his mother when he was two.  The Allans took him in but never adopted him.  They sent him to school in England at age six (where he would have been exposed to Anglican Marian sensibilities).  Poe quarreled with his foster father and dropped out of school.  At 18, he joined the army.  His foster mother died when he was 20.  Then Poe made a failed run at West Point, which led to a definitive break with John Allan, who died and left Poe out of his will.  At 27, Poe married his 13 year-old cousin.  After a decade of literary struggle, he lost her to tuberculosis—a devastating blow.  Poe himself died two years later at 40.

In light of his turbulent life, Poe’s turning to the Blessed Virgin is poignant.  On the one hand, his life experience had robbed him of hope.  But it had also left him clamoring for it.  In a sense, the Virgin represents what Poe most longed for—a Mother’s merciful gaze.  The line in the introductory quatrain, “turn thine eyes/Upon the sinner’s sacrifice” sounds most like the Salve Regina’s plea: Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos/misericordes oculos ad nos converte (“Turn then, most gracious advocate/Thine eyes of mercy toward us”).  In contrast to Poe’s tempestuous experiences, the prospect of the Virgin’s accompaniment presents a stabilizing, even soothing, presence: “In joy and woe–in good and ill–/Mother of God, be with me still!”

Poe’s recourse to Mary demonstrates the power of the Virgin to cut through ideology (as Poe was brought up Protestant) and through cynicism.  Poe intuits that Mary knows suffering, and has withstood great tragedy with strength and dignity; Poe knows that she is capable of understanding him.  At the same time, she is a merciful mother, who stands by the side of the suffering, and acts as the great Mediatrix—our advocate.  Yet her innate appeal lies beyond the theological titles, and comes down to the most humanizing of labels: she is a mother.  Poe is an orphan, and like so many other orphans, he is naturally drawn to her.

The story has it that Poe wrote “Hymn” after he was lured into a Catholic church by the pealing of the noon bell.  In his poem, “The Bells,” Poe shows his attraction to the sound of bells: “What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!”  When Poe asked for the significance of the noon bell, the Jesuits that ran the church explained the meaning of the Angelus, and Poe was intrigued by the ritual prayer.

For its demonstration of the Marian appeal to the bereaved across denominational boundaries; of Mary’s attraction as a mother to those who suffer; and for its recognition of the values of rituals, this poem by a writer of the occult is indeed a “Catholic Hymn.”

(This piece was originally published by the author in Ad Veritatem, the newsletter of the Catholic lawyers guild, the St. Thomas More Society of Orange County, Calif.)

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[1] The short story within which “Hymn” is contained, “Morella,” involves a typically macabre Poe subject (a husband’s dead wife comes back as their daughter).  However, “Hymn” was written independently of the story.