Catholic Media Myths: Edgar Allen Poe’s “Hymn”

Written By John Peter Yamauchi

A That’s the Word listener, Caroline, wrote to us a few months ago with a story idea. We read the story, and nearly leapt out of our seats with excitement. This story was incredible, and fit the That’s the Word format to a T.

In fact, Caroline even wonderfully wrote the story in our style:

“This guy was orphaned at a very early age. He was cared for by a family but never adopted by them. He went to college for only one year and dropped out because of no money. He was a writer, but only marginally successful at first. He went to West Point but didn’t make it there either. He and his adoptive family became estranged.

“He kept writing and began to enjoy some success. He wrote short stories, often with macabre and terrifying themes. He wrote poetry ranging from romantic to bizarre. He published a literary magazine but it failed after a few years.

“He had a bad reputation for drinking and possibly heroine; he may have had mental health problems. He lived in several cities: Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond. For a time he lived a short distance from St. John’s College, now Fordham University. Always struggling with themes such as life, death, spirituality, and the here after, he became acquainted with the Jesuits and students at the university. He noticed the bells often woke him early in the morning, and then rang out again at noon, and yet again in the late evening. “What the heck are the bells ringing all the time?” He even wrote a remarkable poem that began with tingling and gentle bells to wild, loud “tintinnabulation”, the sound becoming maddening! And the poem is a bit maddening!

“One day he asked one of the Jesuits why did they ring the bells so early, waking him up, and again at noon and dusk. When it was explained to him he went to his house and began to write. This time not a frightening account of murder and death, not a macabre tale of irony and mystery, not this time.

“This time the writer of “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Raven” wrote “Hymn”. A beautiful poem about the Angelus, the bells and prayer that commemorates the Blessed Virgin Mary’s encounter with the Angel Gabriel.

“Yes, this tortured and conflicted man, dead at the age of 40, was Edgar Allen Poe.”

Here is the poem, Hymn, by Edgar Allan Poe, as it appeared in 1945 (foreshadowing!):

At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and wo—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!

What an incredible story! If only it were true!

Caroline told us that she heard a bishop tell this story. I don’t blame either for repeating the story, since, as related below, otherwise reputable sources are repeating it either without any research or willfully omitting critical details.

So what is the issue with this story?

There are two key claims in the various versions of the Catholic myth:

  1. Poe asked a priest why the bells rang when they did and was briefed on the Angelus

  2. Poe was inspired by the bells and the prayer to write an uplifting hymn to Our Lady

The first claim appears to be pure urban legend. The only source I could find for this story is a blog post from 2015, which cites no sources. None of the scholarly works on the subject mention this story.

The second claim falls apart as soon as you look at the context. Remember how we specified the above version of Hymn was from 1945? Well, the poem was actually first published in one of Poe’s short stories, Morella, in 1935.

What is Morella about? Here is the Wikipedia summary:

“An unnamed narrator marries Morella, a woman with great scholarly knowledge who delves into studies of the German philosophers Fichte and Schelling, dealing with the question of identity. Morella spends her time in bed reading and teaching her husband. Realizing her physical deterioration, her husband, the narrator, becomes frightened and wishes for his wife's death and eternal peace. Eventually, Morella dies in childbirth proclaiming: ‘I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection... which thou didst feel for me, Morella. And when my spirit departs shall the child live.’

“As the daughter gets older the narrator notices she bears an uncanny resemblance to her mother, but he refuses to give the child a name. By her tenth birthday the resemblance to Morella is frightening. Her father decides to have her baptized to release any evil from her, but this event brings the mother's soul back into her daughter. At the ceremony, the priest asks the daughter's name, to which the narrator replies ‘Morella’. Immediately, the daughter calls out, ‘I am here!’ and dies. The narrator himself bears her body to the tomb and finds no trace of the first Morella where he lays the second.”

Yes, I just quoted Wikipedia. I did actually read the story, and this summary is accurate. If you want to confirm the details, you can read Morella for yourself.

Well, perhaps this poem is a bright spot in the story? Nope. Hymn (referred to in the story as “a Catholic hymn”) is clearly there to heighten the horror and give literary critics something to pick apart.

In fact, even though all the Catholic sources say that Poe went home and wrote the above version of Hymn, that version is not even the original version that was published in Morella. This is the original version of Hymn:

Sancta Maria! turn thine eyes
Upon the sinner's sacrifice
Of fervent prayer, and humble love,
From thy holy throne above.

At morn, at noon, at twilight dim,
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn.
In joy and wo, in good and ill,
Mother of God! be with me still.

When my hours flew gently by.
And no storms were in the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy love did guide to thine and thee.

Now, when clouds of Fate o'ercast
All my Present, and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine.

Note the extra stanza doubling down on the Marian intercession.

If anything, the critical consensus is that this Marian Hymn is in the story to horrify Poe’s Protestant audience. The woman prays to Mary, dies, and ends up possessing her daughter, who also dies.

So we arrive at the most anticlimactic twist ever: the author famous for macabre poems and short stories wrote an uplifting Marian hymn … to heighten the horror of a macabre short story.

So much for that, right?

Mostly, but there’s still one curious detail.

The hymn disappears

Hymn appeared in Morella in the 1935, 1839, and 1840 editions of the short story. However, starting with the 1842 edition, Hymn and the surrounding context were removed from Morella. Hymn would reappear in a collection of poems in 1845 in its altered form. The poem was originally to have been titled Catholic Hymn, like in the story, though Poe changed his mind before publication.

Why did Poe remove Hymn from Morella and publish an altered version of the poem? Some have speculated that perhaps he wanted to eliminate the idea that the horrors were somehow related to praying for Mary’s intercession, out of respect for Catholicism and the Virgin. However, this is just speculation.

Even though this tidbit is interesting, it is not mentioned by any of the Catholic clickbait that have pushed this story, and it is not enough to back up any claims about Poe’s “spiritual hunger.”

Where did this story come from?

Almost every Catholic source that mentions this story tells it nearly verbatim:

I would like to think that these articles simply suffer from lack of research, but all of them clearly know the poem is from Morella.

The author of this blog appears to have stumbled across the poem and simply speculated on the origin and author’s perspective, completely unaware that the poem came from Morella: https://stuffjeffreads.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/hymn-by-edgar-allan-poe/

Aleteia either was unaware of the story or prudently avoided it when describing his (documented) relationship with the Jesuits: https://aleteia.org/2017/07/28/edgar-allan-poes-unknown-friendship-with-the-jesuits/

Only one source bothered to look at this story critically: http://supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com/2020/10/our-lady-of-rosary-and-edgar-allan-poe.html

There has been some scholarly work on Poe’s connections to Catholicism, which include none of the story mentioned in the popular blogs:

To be clear, I’m not saying that Poe didn’t write this out of some spiritual longing. Given that he was outside the Church, Poe certainly felt spiritual hunger, though he was not necessarily aware of it. Poe could have derived consolation from Hymn. However, there is simply no evidence to justify declaring that he did receive consolation, or that this poem came out of some spiritual longing. These claims become even more baseless when the articles omit most of the basic facts of the story, which do not back up the Catholic clickbait story.

Hymn is a beautiful poem, and Poe should be commended for his spot-on representation of Catholic Mariology.

That’s still no reason to ignore the horror story in the room.

~ John Peter Yamauchi

John Peter Yamauchi
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