Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee (manuscript)

Annabel Lee.
By Edgar A. Poe.

Fairy tale opening

"Many and many" mimics children's story language—"once upon a time." Poe frames adult grief in童話 syntax, making the loss feel both distant and preserved.

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

Seraphs coveting mortals

Seraphim are the highest order of angels, closest to God. Having them **covet** (violate the Tenth Commandment) inverts the moral universe—heaven becomes jealous of earth.

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 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)

Supernatural murder

The speaker blames angels for sending the wind that killed her. This isn't metaphor—he literally believes heaven murdered Annabel Lee out of envy.

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

Dissever

Archaic legal term meaning to separate or divide. Poe uses courtroom language to argue his case against cosmic forces trying to break their bond.

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;

Necrophilia implication

"I lie down by the side" in her tomb. Whether literal or metaphorical, the speaker spends nights at her grave—devotion sliding into obsession.

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 side of the sea.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Poe's Last Poem and Lost Women

CONTEXT Poe wrote this in 1849, months before his death at 40. It was published two days after he died. The poem followed a pattern: Poe's mother died when he was three, his foster mother when he was twenty, and his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847 at age 24—after years of illness. Poe married Virginia when she was 13 and he was 27. She was his cousin.

"She was a child and I was a child" is biographically loaded. The poem obsessively returns to their youth, mentioned three times. Whether this refers to Virginia or earlier loves (some scholars suggest Sarah Elmira Royster, his teenage sweetheart), Poe's idealized women are always young, always dying, always preserved in memory at the moment before loss.

The kingdom by the sea appears six times—an incantatory refrain that turns geography into fairy tale. Poe never specifies where, making it simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. The sea represents both romantic isolation (their private kingdom) and death (where her tomb sits). The repetition hypnotizes, mimicking obsessive grief that circles back to the same details.

The Mechanics of Obsession

The poem's structure performs obsessive thought. Notice how "Annabel Lee" appears at the end of lines 4, 10, 16, 26, 33, 34, and 40—her name like a bell tolling. The rhyme scheme locks on the long "e" sound (sea/Lee/me) and never lets go. For 41 lines, nearly every stanza ends with that same vowel. It's sonic imprisonment.

Poe escalates the central claim three times. First: angels coveted their love. Second: angels envied them ("not half so happy in Heaven"). Third: angels murdered her. By stanza four, envy becomes conspiracy becomes assassination. The speaker isn't mourning—he's prosecuting.

The final stanza shifts from past to present tense: "the moon never beams," "the stars never rise," "I lie down." Grief hasn't ended; it's his permanent condition. The poem is the nightly ritual. And that last image—lying beside her corpse in the tomb—crosses from devotion into something darker. Poe gives us a speaker who won't let the dead rest, who treats a sepulchre as a marriage bed. The "beautiful Annabel Lee" gets repeated four times in the last eight lines, her beauty now inseparable from her death.