ANNABEL LEE

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, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn 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 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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

>>`"Annabel Lee" was a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. This poem explained and symbolized the death of her wife. His wife died due to a burst in one of her blood vessels in 1847. Due to her ill condition in 1842, his anxiety worsened. Moreover, they were lacking money, therefore seeing Poe's mother-in-law as an important soucre of strength for the couple.

This is probably the last poem Poe wrote. In 1850, Frances S. Osgood identified Poe's wife, Virginia Clemm, as the real Annabel Lee, an attribution that has meet with much agreement. In contrast, T. O. Mabbott and other scholars have pointed out that although perhaps inspired, in part, by Virginia, Annabel Lee is a fictional character and need not truly represent any real person. Elmira Shelton, Poe's childhood sweetheart, considered herself as Annabel Lee, even though she outlived the author by many years.

Sources:

Nagill, F. N. (1992). Critical survey of poetry. Volume 5. Pasadena: Salem Press Inc.
Smith, A. J. M. (1967). Seven centuries of verse, English and American. United States of America, Canada: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Grafx, G. (1997). http://www.pambytes.com/poe/poems/annabel.html. September 17, 2007.