Annabel Lee

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.


To be honest I chose this poem because I looked up Edgar Allan Poe poems and it came up... BUT I ended up really liking it for a number of reasons. I feel like the narrator's love is really palpable. The story is very well told by Poe. I felt like this was one of his poem that was really plot heavy, in that it wasn't as descriptive and dark through imagery as his other poems; rather the irony and plot itself evoked a lot of emotion of out me. 


Foreshadowing: 
The first two stanzas talk about the couples love. The tense is important in this case. Note how in the lines "And this maiden she lived with no other thought/Than to love and be loved by me" (5-6), it is in the past tense. This means that either they have either separated or the woman has died. This foreshadows the eventual demise of the speaker's love.


Rhyme:
Poe uses rhyme throughout the entirety of a poem. Poe is known for using rhyme in nearly all of his poems. It helps create a flow to the poem that is crucial to the feeling of the piece. In my opinion, it helps its eeriness because it is so grotesque in its topic and yet reads as if it were a nursery rhyme. 


Metaphor:
"So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me" 

The highborn kinsman is a metaphor for the wind that took Annabel from the window. It romanticizes her death - something Poe was known for. He is cited as saying that the death of a beautiful woman is one of the most beautiful things in the world. By saying the wind was a "highborn kinsman", he makes it sound much more poetic than "the wind flung her out the window".