poem

Annabel Lee, Sep 12, 2026

0 votes
◆

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 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 see 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 side of the sea.

◆

Comments

  1. Loading comments…
📖 About this poem

Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" as his last completed poem, and it reads like a lullaby that refuses to let grief be quiet. A man mourns the young bride taken from him, insisting their love was so vast even angels grew jealous and conspired against it. The music does the real work here: that rolling, insistent rhythm, the repetition of her name and the phrase "kingdom by the sea," the way sound circles back on itself like waves. It builds a spell rather than a narrative. The final image, of the speaker lying nightly beside her tomb by the sea, is tender and unsettling in equal measure, love curdling into something closer to haunting. What keeps it alive today is that mix, the way it captures grief's refusal to accept limits, dressed in language so musical it almost disguises how strange and possessive the devotion really is.

⚠ Sandbox · not production