Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee - context Summary

Composed After Virginia's Death

Annabel Lee was written and published in 1849. It is widely read as a late, elegiac poem by Edgar Allan Poe, often taken as a tribute to his young wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, who died two years earlier. The narrator recalls an intense, almost mythic childhood love in a "kingdom by the sea" and describes his beloved’s death and burial. The poem dwells on mourning and an undying spiritual bond; its simple, repetitive framing creates a feeling of timeless grief tied to a specific moment in Poe’s life.

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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 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.