Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 5, Section 22: For Annie

Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 5, Section 22: For Annie
After the death of his 24-year-old wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm, from tuberculosis in Fordham (in the Bronx), New York, on January 30, 1847, a grieving Poe eventually turned to lecturing. In July 1848, while speaking on "The Poets and Poetry of America," during the first of three known visits to Lowell, Mass., he met and fell in love with Mrs. Nancy Locke Heywood Richmond, the wife of Charles B. Richmond, a successful (and tolerant) paper manufacturer. While Poe's relationship with "Annie" (as he called her) probably remained platonic, it was nonetheless the most passionate and romantic experience of the final 15 months of his life. Annie traveled from Lowell to visit Poe and his mother-in-law, Muddy (Maria Clemm), in Fordham. She promised to visit him upon his deathbed (which purportedly led Poe to attempt suicide in a Boston hotel in November 1848). And as his final letters demonstrate, he longed to move close to her until the end. Shortly after Poe's death, Muddy did move to Lowell where she resided in Annie's home for about two years.
Courtesy of the University of Lowell
Thank Heaven! the crisis-
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last-
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.
Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length-
But no matter!-I feel
I am better at length.
And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead-
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.
The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart:-ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!
The sickness-the nausea-
The pitiless pain-
Hare ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain-
With the fever called "Living"
That burned in my brain.
And oh! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated-the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the napthaline river
Of Passion accurst:-
I have drank of a water
That quenches all thirst:-
Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound.
From a spring but a verj few
Feet under ground -
From a cavern not very fer
Down under ground.
And ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy
And narrow my bed;
For man never slept
In a different bed-
And, to sleep, you must slumber
In just such a bed.
My tantalized spirit
Here blandly reposes,
Forgetting, or never
Regretting its roses-
Its old agitations
Of myrtles and roses:
For now, while so quietly
Lying, it fancies
A holier odor
About it, of pansies-
A rosemary odor,
Commingled with pansies-
With rue and the beautiful
Puritan pansies.
And so it lies happily,
Bathing in many
A dream of the truth
And the beauty of Annie-
Drowned in a bath
Of the tresses of Annie.
She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
To sleep on her breast-
Deeply to sleep
From the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished,
She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm-
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm.
And I lie so composedly,
Now, in my bed,
(Knowing her love)
That you fancy me dead-
And I rest so contentedly,
Now in my bed,
(With her love at my breast)
That you fancy me dead-
That you shudder to look at me,
Thinking me dead:-
But my heart it is brighter
Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
For it sparkles with Annie-
It glows with the light
Of the love of my Annie-
With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Annie.

[@Anna-loves-you]

Love this poem so much, sends shivers down my spine