Woman Receives Poems from Spirit World • essay by uncredited

1923 Weird Tales Essay & Ai generated Poem

Weird Tales Volume 1, Issue 3, May 1923

Woman Receives Poems from Spirit World

Seated in an Evanston drawing room with some twenty other guests, Mrs. John H. Curran of St. Louis wrote quaint poetry by the yard, all of which, she claims, came from "Patience Worth," who dwells in the land of spirits. Mrs. Curran declares that she first made the acquaintance of ''Patience Worth" in July, 1913, while seated with a friend at a Ouija board. Suddenly the Ouija wrote:

"Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth is my name.'' Since then, says Mrs. Curran, Patience has dictated to her numerous poems, dramas and stories. Most of these are in archaic Anglo-Saxon.

"It is as though you spoke through a wall to a person every day,'' said Mrs. Curran in explaining the apparent phenomenon—“ a. person who would tell you his habits and customs. After several years of conversation, you would know as much about that person as if he were in the same room with you. So I feel about Patience Worth. I have never seen her, nor have I tried to picture her, but since she often talks in Anglo-Saxon I have concluded that she must have lived on the Scottish border about the time of the Stuarts. She has given me stories in the language of the Bible, of the Elizabethan age, the last century, and this.

"It is not Spiritualism, and I am not a medium. I am perfectly normal when I receive messages from the personality who calls herself Patience Worth. In fact, I can converse with others in the room while she dictates to me."

Then, to prove her point, Mrs. Curran rapidly recited a poem that she claimed was sent from the spirit world.

AI-generated poem based on the essay:

Lo, the twilight’s hand doth stretch o’er heathen wold,

Where on bent stalks of winnowed grain the wind doth sigh.

There did mine own folk ply their seed and scythe,

Their whispers caught by the dusk, long sunk to rest.

The droning hush of crow and crag doth yawn

O’er flint-strewn paths where ghosts of women spin;

Their distaff’s hum, a lullaby of ages fled.

In yon far vale, the kine low soft, as though in prayer,

And I, a lone maid at day’s dim gate, do heed

The hush of olden tongues that wend the twilight air.

From the oak’s rough breast a secret tune doth slip,

A song of fathers’ swords and mothers’ tears,

Of hearth-glow in the hollow gloom and bread from stone.

Aye, by moon’s pale shroud and star’s lost gleam,

I twist my fate in woolen strands of dusk and dawn,

And harken to that silence where all souls do speak.