Virginia Eliza

Portrait of Virginia Eliza Poe, painted shortly after her death.

Virginia Eliza

She died so young

and yet she lives,

a dark strawflower
pressed in poems,

paper stronger

than ever she was, than 

mind or flesh of brother, cousin,

spouse and spirit who

wrote her, dreamed her.

She was a child

who never changed

innocent, faithful as leaf

to tree till her autumn came.

Then she bled; all women bleed,

but she from her heart

though they said her lungs,

still her harp rang sweetest
when she came to sing 
farewell in the freezing night.

Her cheap dress hung 
from a nymph's frail frame

yet she was wise and wide with love,

a shield, a guardian host,

a black-eyed garden walled in one;
after, a pale fire burning in the brain

a raven crying forevermore.

She still walks the House

where the Ushers fell,

haunts the dank tarns of Wier

where Psyche failed, not strong enough

to keep him from her dead arms

or sing louder than the memory

of her child's high tenor, 
face ice white, dianthus eyes

brimming with a care

that could find no fault

nor feel a lack

though her brief pained life

was lived in ruin;

it ended, after all, as it began, warm

in the haven of a madman's arms.

June 2012

Acrostic valentine written for her husband when Virginia was 23, 11 months before her death from tuberculosis.

Posted for   Fireblossom Friday   at real toads

Process Notes: Virginia Eliza Clemm was Edgar Allan Poe's first cousin. They met when she was seven, when Poe moved in with her widowed mother, his invalid grandmother and their extended family in Baltimore. There was considerable disparity in their ages; their marriage took place when she was 13 and he 27, but the evidence suggests it was her own choice, that they were a loving, happy and devoted couple. Friends at the time said the Poes were more like sister and brother, and the marriage was not consummated till some years later, though some scholars suggest it was never consummated. Regardless, Poe did his best to support and care for her and her mother throughout their lives.  His work was little respected during his own short lifetime, and the couple lived in grinding poverty on handouts and the pittance he earned as a peripatetic journalist. Virginia Eliza Poe died of tuberculosis in January, 1847 at the age of 24. Much is made of the macabre nature of Poe's genius, and the theme of the 'death of a beautiful woman,' which plays a large role in so much of his prose and poetry. One wonders how much of his finest writing we would have had without Virginia.

Images: public domain, courtesy wikipedia & wikimedia commons