“The Life-Preserving Coffin” (A Poem)

A reaction to a presentation of Mr. Isenbrant’s life-preserving coffin at the American Institute Fair in New York City, Seba Smith’s poem, “The Life-Preserving Coffin,” is an exceedingly sentimental piece which fed into the growing Victorian concerns regarding premature burial.[1] Fears over untimely interment, which started in France and Germany in the seventeenth century, infiltrated the United States, primarily the regions of Massachusetts and New Jersey, during the nineteenth-century and prompted the formation of anti-premature-burial societies, the publication of a community newspaper called Our Dumb Animals, the release of William Tebb’s international bestseller Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented in 1896, the creation of multiple literary works dealing with the anxiety (Edgar Allan Poe was the most prolific, with the theme appearing in “Berenice,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Ligeia,” “Morella,” and “The Premature Burial”), and the patenting of twenty-two security coffin designs between 1868 and 1925.[2] In Smith’s poem, the common motif of innocence witnessed in many of the premature burial narratives is displayed through the young girl who is hastily entombed yet miraculously saved by Isenbrant’s invention.

They laid her in the coffin, 
When the breath of life had fled, 
And a soft and satin pillow 
Was placed beneath her head;

And round her form was folded
A robe of silken white,
And the lid was closed and fastened,
Shutting out the cheerful light.

But near those lifeless fingers
Is placed a little spring,
That with the slightest motion
The lid will open fling.

So to the tomb the mourners
Have borne her from away,
And back to their cheerless dwelling
Have gone to weep and pray.

There safe will be her resting,
For the door is bolted tight;
None shall disturb the sleeper
Through her long and silent night.

The door is barred and bolted,
But the lock hath so been planned,
That a key within turns only
By that dead sleeper’s hand.

And in her silent dwelling,
A bell, of solemn tone,
Is hung where none can move it,
Save her dead hand alone.

To her long home they’ve borne her,
In her silken winding sheet,
And many a stricken mourner,
Hath gone about the street.

And now the still night cometh –
The moon is over head,
And in their homes the living
Sleep soundly as the dead.

But there’s one lonely watcher,
O’er whom sleep hath no power;
She looks from out the window,
Long past the midnight hour.

It is the weeping mother;
Her eyes are on the tomb,
And her heart is with that daughter,
Cut down in maiden bloom.

Why starts that mother wildly?
Why is her cheek so red?
Why from that window farther
Still leaneth out of head?

She turneth to her chamber,
And crieth out for joy;
She calleth to her husband,
And to her darling boy –

“Arise, arise, O husband!
The dear, lost child is found;
The solemn bell is ringing;
I hear the heavenly sound.”

Then forth into the graveyard
Full quickly they have sped;
And that strong door is opened,
Where sleeps the lovely dead.

And there they saw their daughter,
As the moonbeams on her fell,
In her narrow coffin sitting,
Ringing that solemn bell.[3]

Works Referenced

Bondeson, Jan. Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.

Smith, Seba. “The Life -Preserving Coffin.” The Rover: A Weekly Magazine of Tales, Poetry, and Engravings. Vol. 2. Ed. Seba Smith. New York: S.B. Dean and Company, 1844. 281-282.
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[1] Smith, 281.
[2] Bondeson, 183-237.
[3] Smith, 281-282.