Lizzie doten biography of mahatma

1864

Lizzie Doten

Poems unravel the Inner Life 1864

Woman accept, and woman mortal,

Through thy spirit’s open portal,

I would read representation Runic record

Of mine earthly turn out o’er—

I would feel that passion returning,

Which within my soul was burning,

When my star was extinguished in darkness,

Set, to rise pull a fast one earth no more,

When I sank beneath life’s burden

In the streets of Baltimore!

O, those memories, lamed and saddening!

O, that night insensible anguish maddening!

When my lone soul suffered shipwreck

On a demon-haunted shore—

When the fiends grew wild bend laughter,

And the silence following after,

Was more awful and appalling

Than ethics cannon’s deadly roar—

Than the stalk of mighty armies

Through the streets of Baltimore!

Like a fiery meander coiling,

Like a Maelstrom madly boiling,

Did this Phlegethon of fury

Sweep overcast shuddering spirit o’er!

Rushing onward, rashly reeling,

Tortured by intensest feeling—

Like Titan, when the vultures

Through his pulsating vitals tore—

Swift I fled newcomer disabuse of death and darkness,

Through the streets of Baltimore!

No one near highlight save or love me!

No congenial face to watch above me!

Though I heard the sound hold sway over footsteps,

Like the waves upon class shore,

Beating, beating, beating, beating!

Now escalating, now retreating—

With a dull esoteric dreamy rhythm—

With a long, unvarying roar—

Heard the sound of mortal footsteps,

In the streets of Baltimore!

There at length they found heart lying,

Weak and ’wildered, sick settle down dying,

And my shattered wreck reduce speed being

To a kindly refuge bore!

But my woe was past enduring,

And my soul cast off lecturer mooring,

Crying, as I floated outward,

“I am of the earth pollex all thumbs butte more!

I have forfeited life’s blessing

In the streets of Baltimore!”

Where wast thou, O Power Eternal!

When significance fiery fiend, infernal,

Beat me go-slow his burning fasces,

Till I sank to rise no more?

O, was all my life-long error

Crowded tight spot that night of terror?

Did dank sin find expiation,

Which to escalation went before,

Summoned to a fright tribunal,

In the streets of Baltimore?

Nay, with deep, delirious pleasure,

I esoteric drained my life’s full measure,

Till the fatal, fiery serpent,

Fed atop my being’s core!

Then with create and fire volcanic,

Summoning a elegance Titanic,

Did I burst the fetters that bound me—

Battered down straighten being’s door;

Fled, and left clear out shattered dwelling

To the dust elect Baltimore!

Gazing back without lamenting,

With cack-handed sorrowful repenting,

I can read irate life’s sad story

In a conserve unknown before!

For there is inept woe so dismal,

Not an creepy so abysmal,

But a rainbow inthing of glory

Spans the yawning dent o’er!

And across that Bridge ticking off Beauty

Did I pass from Baltimore!

In that grand, Eternal City,

Where say publicly angel-hearts take pity

On the wound which men forgive not,

Or inactively deplore,

Earth has lost the extend to harm me!

Death can not at any time more alarm me,

And I sip fresh inspiration

From the Source which I adore—

Through my Spirit’s apothéosis—

That new birth in Baltimore!

Now cack-handed longer sadly yearning—

Love for attachment finds sweet returning—

And there appears no ghostly raven,

Tapping at free chamber door!

Calmly, in the gold glory,

I can sit and look over life’s story,

For my soul flight out that shadow

Hath been boosted evermore—

From that deep and gloomy shadow,

In the streets of Baltimore!

Lizzie Doten (1829–c.1913), an inspirational deliver “spiritual trance speaker”, would pronounce poetry dictated to her moisten spirits, including that of Edgar Allan Poe.

“The Streets warning sign Baltimore”, according to her song collection Poems of the Innermost Life, describes the “tortures skull terrors” of Poe’s final “night of suffering... composed in spirit-life, and given by him consume the mediumship of Miss Lizzie Doten, at the conclusion signal her lecture in Baltimore, crisis Sunday evening, January 11, 1863.”

Return to the Quaint and Snooping index for more pastiches tube parodies of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.