Annabel Lee ~ Edgar Allan Poe

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.

~Excerpt from Annabel Lee - Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee, her name is said seven times. She is the one whom the narrator speaks of, the object of his focus, if not obsession. Annabel is a variant of the name Amabel, meaning loving, beautiful. The narrator says that she "has no other thought than to be loved by me," this and the narrators claim that the reader may know this maiden both serve to make her seem but a fantasy and not a wholly real girl. It begins lightly with Annabel Lee and their "love that was more than love," but ends rather darkly with the readers' discovery of her death and his now apparent obsession with her despite this fact.

The reader doesn't find out about Annabel Lees' death until line 26, where the narrator says; "...chilling and killing my Annabel Lee." This is the only part where her death is explicitly mentioned. For the rest of the poem, the word sepulchre is used in its' place. A sepulchre is a tomb, the narrator speaks of her tomb as a stand in to talk about losing her without mentioning her death. One line of particular interest is line 19. "...to shut her up in a sepulchre." This indicates the narrators' view that her tomb is a prison, rather than a resting place. Five times the "kingdom by the sea" is brought to the readers' attention, and this in the first 4 stanzas. However in the very last stanza it is not the kingdom that is paired with the sea but rather the sepulchre instead. A kingdom is no kingdom without people, without life to fill it. A sepulchre is merely an empty room without the dead to fill it. Where the poem began with life, it ends with death.