Edgar Allan Poe: 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.

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 wingéd 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 beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

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, 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 sepulcher there by the sea-

In her tomb by the side of the sea. 

This blog post is dedicated to two dear, really awesome friends of mine: Laura, who gave me my copy of Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems for my birthday (how perfect for National Poetry Month) and Xandra, who recommended "Annabel Lee" when she saw I was doing Poe, and who is also able to recite quite a bit of "The Raven" without prompting. As a whole I've always enjoyed the Poe I've read, although it's mostly been short stories- The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart in high school, The Purloined Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget for Writing Seminar Quarter 1 this year. The Masque of Red Death is quoted in the beginning of Stephen King's The Shining. I've obviously read the "The Raven", also mentioned, but don't know much of the rest of his poetry.


With a name like Annabel Lee, in a kingdom by the sea, many and many years ago no less, the poem reads off like a fairy tale. I bet the kingdom by the sea was on a cliff, that's appropriately fairy tale. At first thought fairy tales doesn't really seem to suit Poe, except, when you think about it, he is really good at the long, sweeping, romantic syntax that needs to be the backbone of a fairy tale. Except this is Poe, so the woman ends up in a sepulcher by the sea. A tragic fairy tale. Those are things, right? Apparently the Little Mermaid actually commits suicide in the original tale, so tragic fairy tales are very legitimate.


Most fairy tales seem to center around a beautiful maiden, which is something I'm not sure I understand right now after midnight alone in the lounge (because nightblogging). What about women inspires swordfights and gallantry, far away lands, castles, and lines like, "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams" in their honor? What about my gender causes intense metaphor, the need for a quest and a bard to tell the story later? There's something about making the maiden the crux of any fairy tale that kind of removes her from the story, because she's this all encompassing force that has to drive so much action and language. Think of Rapunzel in the tower- the maiden's this beautiful symbol, a proverbial tower to be seen across the land, but who is she as a person?


Poe uses the intensity of a beautiful woman quite frequently in his works and even acknowledged in "The Philosophy of Composition" that, "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world". He backs up his use of this theme in "The Raven" in particular by arguing that true Beauty (like that of a woman, I suppose) effects not the heart or the mind but the very soul itself, just as sadness permeates the soul. Therefore combining the death, the pinnacle of sadness, with the paragon of beauty, a woman, will have the greatest emotional, poetic effect. Obviously this theme worked well for Poe, as he used it throughout his works, and I actually discovered that quote originally because someone had applied it to Christopher Nolan as well. This gets joked about a lot on the internet, actually, that every Nolan film has a dead girlfriend/wife in it. (Dark Knight- Rachel, Inception- Mal, Memento- Lenny's wife, it applies for his lesser known films as well.) I wrote about this theme in my write up for Writing Seminar about Marie Roget, citing Chandra Levy and Natalie Holloway as contemporary, real life examples of beautiful dead women still holding intrigue in the media.

Obviously I can't ignore the effectiveness of this theme, sure, but this sure is a lot of responsibility, importance and significance for Poe's Lenore to hold, having all of the epic "The Raven" be about her.


John Green, a young adult novelist in case you don't know, calls this the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, having men put a woman on a pedestal and have them signify so much. He, for his part, tries to write three dimensional young woman who are very flawed and therefore harder to see as perfect archetypes. Pudge may be infatuated with Alaska of Looking for Alaska, but that doesn't make any difference to the plot that splits the book into two parts (spoiler proofed in case you haven't read it- you should). I don't admittedly remember much of Paper Towns, but its arguably most popular quote is Margo saying, "Imagine me completely." I guess that's why romanticizing woman doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally, because I don't see myself as something inspiring quests, or something to be written sonnets about every other minute. I smashed two bottles of Sparkling Grape Juice on my foot a few weekends ago, I still don't have all of my Physics done for the night, goodness knows how long I left my laundry sitting in a dryer down in Sol's, and goodness knows how much longer it's going to be until I fold it. If you expect me to communicate within the first 30 minutes after I wake up, it's probably not going to happen.

This has kind of turned into a feminist post, I think, but not a radical one in my opinion. The Tl;Dr version of what I think about feminism is that I don't want to be an object, and I dislike the idea that people may only talk to me because I don't have a y chromosome. I want people to talk to me because I seem like a cool person overall. I dislike the fact that I am seen as a scarce resource because of the demographics of the college I go to, and that I as an individual are more or less something that obeys the law of scarcity. There's a reason I hang out with the people I do- they don't cause me to feel any of the above things (well, occasional asshole friend with the occasional asshole comment aside. He eventually apologized). In a semi-related note, we're watching Tangled this weekend, in which Rapunzel gets out the tower, has her own non-male fueled motivations, and fights along with the male protagonist instead of just being fought for by him.


It's not that I don't appreciate Poe's love of Annabel Lee, it's a beautiful poem that grabbed my attention as such when I read it. It's just that its beauty and the effect that that creates is a high standard to live up to even for a girl in a kingdom by the sea, I think.