Text: Paul Hamilton Hayne, “The Grave of Edgar A. Poe,” Daily Constitutionalist (Augusta, GA), vol. 25, no. 122, March 22, 1874, p. 1, cols. 1-2

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For the Sunday Constitutionalist.

Passing through the city of Baltimore in June, 1873, 1 took the opportunity of visiting the grave of Edgar Allen Poe. This, as many biographers have stated, is to be found in the Cemetery of the Presbyterian Church, on the southeast corner of Fayette and Green streets.

It was upon a somewhat dull and clouded afternoon, that in the company of two friends, I rode from the “Carrollton House” to the place where all that was mortal of the most passionate and wayward of human hearts had, for upwards of a score of years, been mouldering into dust.

When we reached our destination, I saw before me a small, unimpressive edifice, built, I think, of wood, with a graveyard in the rear, proportionately circumscribed. The sexton having admitted us, I looked round upon a scene blankly desolate, and almost as forlorn and quiet — though in the heart of a great city — as if it had been situated on some vast dreary plateau of Central Asia, or some desert site, lifeless and melancholy —

“Whereof the worn Zaharan wanderers tell.”

But few monuments, comparatively, rose above the rank grass with which the cemetery was covered, and these were ancient and decaying.

“Step here,” said one of our friends, “and I will show you what we have come to see!”

He led me to a spot not far from the centre of the graveyard, and pointed out two mounds, one to the right of the position we occupied, being a somewhat fresh mound, although laced with a network of the horrible vegetation so rife all about us, whilst the other presented unmistakable marks of having been made long years before.

“Look!” our friend exclaimed; “this to the right is the grave of Mrs. Clemm, Poe's mother-in-law. you remember. She died at an extreme old age — more than eighty — and has been buried as near her “dear ED.” as possible. I wish that my recollections of that old lady were a trifle less disagreeable.”

“Heavens! how she bored me! Whenever I endeavored to extract from her, something definite as to the life, habits, opinions and genius of her brilliant connection, she always managed to glide by slow, imperceptible degrees, into dismal narratives of her own special experiences, how on one occasion she had nearly been starved by turning over all her available “assets” to her children, and how on another she had been cruelly repulsed, after her “dear ED's death,” by people who ought to have been proud to relieve her wants, and so on, ad infinitum!”

“Yet she was old, broken, poverty-smitten; we must make every allowance!”

“But Poe's grave,” I asked, “where is that?”

“Just to the left of course; there's a wooden foot-board, you see!”

“Yes; certainly,” we rejoined, “ but where is the head stone, the monument which all his biographies, from Griswold's down represent as designating his grave? Have I grown suddenly blind? For upon my soul I can’t perceive that there's either monument or inscription!”

“No, you are not deceived; the fact is,” said our friend, a little hesitatingly, “the stone designed for Poe's grave has never been erected! It was prepared, I wish you to comprehend that clearly; it was prepared, with the well known epitaph engraved in front:

And the reverse inscription of

“But the awful Fate, which hounded the man down in life, exhibited a species of bitter spite against him after he was dead. You’d hardly credit it, but soon after the monument, with the above inscription, was finished and resting in the stone-mason's yard, a freight car, precipitated from the track near by, rushed through the mason's domains, and literally ground the stone to powder!”

“But in the name of wonder,” I replied, why has not a second stone been wrought; and why is it that even these biographers of the poet, who must have known the circumstance you mention, have failed to make it public?”

My friend shrugged his shoulders, and honored me with a reply which was full of eloquent truths; truths, however, the enunciation of which would do no good at this time, and might be productive of harm.

Meanwhile, with a bewildered and melancholy feeling, I examined the wretched mound, which seemed to mark the resting place of some obscure pauper, forsaken by God and man.

The thick woods flaunting above, and around it, were emblematical, I reflected, of the sad and sin-stifled existence which had found the peace of oblivion in so mournful a spot as this.

Stooping, I plucked a few stalks of the rankly flourishing grass, the odor of which — a quintessence of all church-yard abominations, absolutely gave me a sensation of faintness, when I first encountered it.

Was it any sign of the eternal fitness of things that Poe, whose imagination (in one of its phases) was so dark, morbid and unwholesome, taking a ghoul-like delight in images of corruption and “the conquer [column 2:] Worm,” should, at the last, have been consigned to such a woeful “prison house of clay?”

He sent his spirit down among the festering relics of mortality, and played with them in a weird, blood-chilling fashion, and now Nature (in revenge, as it were, from the elements of his own perishable frame,) has raised a sickening growth of vegetable monstrosities, hideous fungi, and the lush outcome of disease and death.

No words can describe the mingled loathing and fear which the perfume of these grasses produced.

I wrapped them carefully up in paper, and months afterwards presented the little package to a Northern lady, without telling her what it contained. No sooner had she opened it than, falling back with an expression of surprise and disgust, she exclaimed: “Why, what a strange, disagreeable odor!” — a circumstance significant enough to prove that my fancy had not been playing me tricks.

The object of this communication, MR. EDITOR, is not, however, merely to portray the appearance and surroundings of Poe's grave — but to call general attention to a fact, disgraceful to South and North alike; the fact that a great and original genius — whatever his weakness of morale or faults of style and subject — is allowed to rest in an obscure cemetery, so neglected and alone, that fifty years hence it may be a matter of difficulty to determine whether he is buried there or not.

In the name of art. of patriotism, of Common gratitude to the benefactions of genius, let us determine that the cold neglect of these many years, shall be atoned for.

Let a monument be placed over the poet's “first couch of rest,” worthy in all respects, of his country and himself.

PAUL H. HAYNE.