Annabel Lee (With Spoilers)

Sherry of Semicolon says, "I'm not sure why this poem is my favorite. I just love the sound of it."





Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me--
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

--Edgar Allen Poe (1850 version)

This is one of my favorites, too, and if it strikes you as sweet and romantic then don't read farther, 'cause I'd hate to spoil it for you.

Every time I taught Freshman English, we'd read this poem and the guys would groan--another love poem, and a maudlin one this time (okay, they didn't use the word maudlin; they usually said "sad and sappy"). By the end of class, however, they loved it.

Here's why: I'd remind them of this song, whose chorus has the same rhythm as Annabel Lee: "They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa, they're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha, to the Funny Farm, where life is beautiful all the time, and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming to take me away!"

Mischievous eyes lit up. "The guy's nuts! The guy in the poem is nuts!"

One or two girls would protest, "He is not! It's a sweet poem!"
"No," the others would argue. "He's crazy!"

And determined to prove it, they'd suddenly be doing the impossible: Analyzing a poem. First, there's the content. He thinks the wind and unseen angels in heaven are jealous of the young lovers, even plotting against them. And he sleeps in her tomb--for YEARS!

Then there's the narcissic, inward-turning rhyme scheme, where practically everything rhymes with "me" and "Lee." Add to this the gruesomely light "chilling and killing" rhyme, and all the other extra internal rhymes ("ever dissever," "night-tide") , which increase in frequency as the poem rushes toward its climax, reinforcing the sense that he's turning more and more inward, more and more toward a solipsistic and airtight (tomblike) world of his own making.

Poe had a sense of humor, albeit a macabre one. Granted, he did write some "normal" love poems--but this isn't one of them. It's a character study in verse of a man who is in love with being in love. It's a depiction of a man in love with the idea of himself as the greatest lover, the greatest soul, in the world.

That he imagines himself pitted against heaven, then, is no mere incidental.