Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago, A

In a kingdom by the sea, B
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
KEY:
By the name of Annabel Lee; B
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
ALLITERATION-
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child, IMAGERY-

In this kingdom by the sea, A
But we loved with a love that was more than love— METAPHOR
a heavenly,
I and my Annabel Lee— A
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven human-like
PARALLELISM
Coveted her and me. creature with
wings. In PERSONIFICATION-
And this was the reason that, long ago, Christianity, a
In this kingdom by the sea, A seraph is an RHYME SCHEME-AABBA
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling angel of the first
My beautiful Annabel Lee; A REPETITION
order, which is a
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me, B very important INTERNAL RHYMES
To shut her up in a sepulchre angel.
In this kingdom by the sea. B
PARALLELISM: The first line of this
a small room or stanza contains the epistrophic
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
monument, cut repetition of “was a child.” As
Went envying her and me— A
Yes!—that was the reason as all men know, in rock or built parallelism, this serves to show that
In this kingdom by the sea A of stone, in
both the speaker and Annabel Lee
That the wind came out of the cloud by night, which a dead
were young when they first fell in
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. person is laid or
buried. love, but that their youth did not
negate the depth of their love.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we— Instead, as Poe writes, “we loved
Of many far wiser than we—
SYMBOLISM:
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea A “The sea” is the symbol of evil and darkness,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
“moon” and “the stars” both symbolizes the
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; A
speaker’s lover and her stunning beauty.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
ALLUSIONS: “seraphs in heaven”, which
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes alludes to the Bible when it degrades the
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; angels to the level of demons.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side A
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, A
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Metaphor: Short Summary :

"And the moon never beams without
bringing me dreams," saying metaphorically
that the moon beaming reminds him of
Annabel Lee, once again that is comparing
her to the prettiest part of the night, the
bright shining gleaming of the beam of
moonlight.
“Annabel Lee” tells the story of young love cut short by tragedy. As the
speaker (often assumed to be based on Poe himself, whose young wife
died shortly before he wrote this poem) discusses his relationship with
the now-deceased Annabel Lee, he presents the love between them as
pure, eternal, and all-conquering. The love between the speaker and
Annabel Lee may have been short-lived, but it remains too powerful to
be defeated, even by death. Through describing this intensely idealized
love, the poem argues that love is the strongest force on earth.