Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe · 1849 · Six stanzas, internal rhyme, ballad music
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, And we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee— With a love that the wingèd 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, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen 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 the 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 feel 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 her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Meaning
A bereavement poem that refuses the ordinary explanation: the speaker insists his beloved was killed by jealous angels, and that he now keeps company with her corpse by the sea.
Analysis
The ballad opening — 'It was many and many a year ago' — is the poem's trap. The fairy-tale formula signals a story that will be charming rather than true, and the reader accepts an unreliable narrator before noticing they have done so.
Poe loads the sound before he loads the meaning. The internal rhymes ('sea', 'Lee', 'me'), the refrains, and the repetition of 'In this kingdom by the sea' make the poem hypnotic to say aloud, which is exactly why the last stanza's literal claim — lying down beside a tomb every night — lands with such force. The music has anaesthetised the reader's objections.
The jealousy of the angels is grief wearing the costume of cosmology. Rather than accept that a child died of illness for no reason, the speaker invents a universe in which her death proves how extraordinary their love was. Poe understood that this is what mourning actually does to thought.
Craft notes for your own writing
- Use heavy rhyme and refrain so the reader is seduced before the final claim arrives.
- Give the narrator a delusion and let the form support it; do not correct them.
- Repeat a phrase from the title until it becomes the poem's pulse.