Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe
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.
She was a child and I 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, 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 her sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.
In Annabel Lee, the speaker reminisces his departed love. They paint this love as something grand, something fantastical-- too good to be true for many. One way the fantastical nature of this love is portrayed is through the repetition of the fact that it happened "in this kingdom by the sea." Kingdoms draw the image of a fictional and possible magical world. This takes the speaker and Annabel out of the ordinary human world and places them in a much more exciting setting, which adds to the mystic of their love.
However magical the love in the poem may be, it is ultimately about loss. The grief is shown through the length of the stanzas. The first stanza is the longest, at 12 lines long. The length reflects the happiness and lively flow of the love the speaker and Annabel Lee share. However, then the stanzas get shorter as their story becomes more tragic. The next stanza is only 8 lines. The third stanza is the shortest in the poem, at 6 lines. This is the stanza where Annabel Lee is killed, and the shortness of the stanza reflects both the shortness of their love story, and the emptiness/lack of thoughts that consumes one after experiencing the loss of someone dear to them. The fourth stanza is 7 lines and the last is 8. The stanzas slowly get longer as the spear begins coping with and accepting his loss. However, the stanzas are never as long as the first one, where Annabel was still alive and their love was still blossoming. So while the speaker slowly starts recovering, it seems they never fully returned to the fullness of thoughts they had while their love was alive.
Furthermore, Annabel Lee does not follow any set pattern for how many lines its stanzas contain. This is befitting the content of the poem, which discusses how the love between the speaker and Annabel Lee went against the expectations and desires of everyone, from "her high-born kinsman" to even "the angels in Haven above" and "the demons down under the sea." Both the stanzas and the love story refuse to adhere to guidelines.
Above is an image of Edgar Allen Poe, and below is a depiction of Annabel and the sea from the poem.
