Edgar Allan Poe Last Words Lord Help My Poor Soul, Allan Poe died in 1849, aged 40, fevered, delirious and alone in a Baltimore hospital. The attending physician, Dr Moran, wrote to Poe’s mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, and told her that “Lord help my poor soul” were Edgar’s last words. Over the years, Moran would write further accounts of Poe’s death, each time the death speech becoming more and more elaborate. So, we really don’t know what Edgar’s last words may have been.
But we do have his poetry, and as a fitting tribute to an author of such mad, exhilirating verse, here’s his last stanza of “The Bells,” published posthumously:
Hear the tolling of the bells —
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people — ah, the people —
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone —
They are neither man nor woman —
They are neither brute nor human —
They are Ghouls: —
And their king it is who tolls: —
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells —
Of the bells: —
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells —
To the sobbing of the bells: —
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells: —
To the tolling of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
