Author(s): Robert Adger Law ‘A Source for "Annabel Lee’ Source: The Journal of English and Germanic

Philology, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1922), pp. 341-346, Published by: University of Illinois Press

"Annabel Lee," one of the most admired and widely known of Edgar Allan Poe's poems, was first
published October 9,1849, two days after the poet's death.1 Much has been written about the circumstances
of its publication, particularly as to the rights of rival publishers, and also about supposed references in the
poem to Poe's wife, Virginia Clemm, to Mrs. Whitman, and to others.2 But although Mrs. Whitman was
convinced that the poem was composed in response to her "Stanzas for Music,"8 and Professor W. F.
Melton has revealed a close analogue of the poem in Poe's prose tale of "Eleonora,"4 no real source of
"Annabel Lee" appears to have been found.

george bell & sons,‘the poems of edgar allan poe’chiswick press: charles whittingham and co.tooks court,
chancery lane, london, the endyhion series, 1900

Annabel Lee
BY 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 wingèd 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 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 her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

International Journal Of Core Engineering & Management (IJCEM) Volume 1, Issue 12, March 2015 135
Romanticism and New Criticism as Critical Perspectives on Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee Sepideh
Kamarzadeh M.A. in English Literature, Islamic Azad University-Arak Branch, Arak, Iran

Annabel Lee is a masterpiece of Edgar Allan Poe who suffers from a lot of miseries during his life and
finally he overcame all of them and found his poetic talent and expressed whole of them in his sad poems.
The best subject-matter for him was death of beautiful woman because of death of his mother in his youth.
This study analyzes his Annabel Lee poem from two different critical school, Roamanticism and New
Criticism. Romantic critics have a special notice on the biography and imagination, thus New Critics study a
piece of art regardless of author's intention and interest; and finds its meaning by campanion of words,
images, and signs which are using in the text.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January of 1809 in Boston by actors parents who used to payed roles in theater.
Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, Poe's mother, was from an English family and David Poe, Poe' s father, was an
Irishman; but he by entering the theatrical performances forgot his family and actually a kind of self-alienation.
David Poe was not only an alcoholic but also an irresponsible and reckless one. When Edgar was still a little
boy, his parents separated from each by a lot of rash struggles. Soon his mother became seriously sick and at the
end of 1811, she died in Richmond. After the death of mother, Edgar adopted to a well-known and wealthy
family, John Allan; and that's why that Edgar Poe became Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar grew up with John Allan and
his wife, who didn't have any child, in Richmond. When he was six year-old, by his foster family, he moved to
England. In England, Edgar began his schooling for five years and after returning to Richmond he was admitted
by local school. At age seventeen, Edgar was entered to Virginia's University and in that time his youth
happiness met its end. At university, he met sons of rich people, whose life style were different from him, but
because he was an adult and liked to be equal to his friends, he started gambling like them. Gambling didn't
bring him money, and made him addicted to it. No longer he understood that he became a irresponsible
person who instead of gambling, used to drink alcohol. After all, he leaved his foster parents and moved to
Boston. There, in 1827, he found new opportunity and published his first book as " Tamerlane and Other
Poems by Bostonian". In 1829 he moved to Baltimore and his second book was published under the title of " Al
Aaraaf, Tamberlane, and Minor Poems". In New York, 1831, he found publisher who collected his book entitle
"Poems by Edgar A. Poe, Second Edition. Of course he has a lot of masterpieces, but another principal poetic
works that he has, is "The Raven and Othet Poems" which was written in 1845, by Edgar Allan Poe. And finally
at age fourty, on October of 1849 he leaved his misfortunate, and pitiful life.

Bloom’s Modern Critical Views’EDGAR ALLAN POE’ Updated Edition,

Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom,Sterling
Professor of the Humanities,Yale University, 2006 Infobase Publishing.

Annabel Lee is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe who, from Romanticism view, says this poem for his darling, Virginia.
Virginia was her thirteen years old cousin, who beloved by Poe and at end they got married. Romanticism
analyzes the poem regarding to the sensation and fancies which is used by author. For them, poem is full of
imagination and a real reader is one who analyzes poem by imagination which is in. From New Criticism
perspective, this poem should not read by attention to author's intentions and interests. They believe that a
piece of art should be understood by finding the relationship between the words and signs and what they
signified. So in analyzing a poem these two schools perspectives are really different from each other.
‘The Attitude towards the Death of a Beloved in Edgar Allan Poe's Poems, The Raven, Lenore,
Ulalume, and Annabel Lee’, Nahla AZEB CHIKH, Master degree Dissertation in Literature and
Civilization, Division of English, Department of Foreign Languages ,Faculty of Arts and
Languages,Mohamed khider University, Biskra,Algeria ,June 2012

2. In Annabel Lee
This poem has a special mood in which the man's attitude is definitely optimistic. In addition, the lines are
enough to clarify his attitude. For instance, in the first stanza, man's love to his beloved could not be
summarized in few words; he sees her as a maiden in a kingdom by the sea. He chooses the most beautiful
image for his beloved. That leads us to assume that they are living happy with their love as the only thing
they were created for: And this maiden she lived with no other thought/ Than to love and be loved by me
(Lines 5-6).The lover continues his description about their pure and innocent love. In fact, he says that their
strong love led the angels of the Heaven feel jealousy:
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 (Lines 9-12).
Moreover, the lover describes himself and his beloved as children, as if he feels that he needs love as a
child does. We can say that the lover lost love during his childhood, and when he found it, he feels as if
born again:
I was a child and she was a child
/In this kingdom by the sea (Lines 7-8).
It is probably that the lover feels nostalgic to his childhood. Childhood is an important stage in the human's
life. Thus, any kind of trauma or accident could last for a long time, or forever. It have been said that there
is always an intimate connection in our present emotional experience with something that occurred in the
past Brill, A.A. Basic Principles of Psychoanalysis. Garden City, New York: Doubleday &
Company, Inc., 1949. Print.
In addition, we do not find any signs of despair or pain. Instead, we see a lover who feels nostalgic for his
lost days with his beloved Annabel Lee whom the wind killed her:
It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea,
I was a child and she was a child (Lines 1-2, 7).
The death of Annabel Lee does not depress the lover due to his belief that true love could never be easily
broken. It is obvious that his love has a super and hidden power, in which led him to claim that no angels,
demons, or whatever will separate their souls: 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 (Lines 30-33).
On the other hand, the lover no longer respects the angels and may feel anger because of their jealousy,
which costs him the life of his beloved. He calls them "highborn kinsman" instead of angels as if they are
from a noble family and everyone should obey them:
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 (Lines 17-20).
There are several repetitions of some lines and phrases with the same meaning. This repetition shows the
impact of the death of Annabel Lee on her lover. In another situation, the lover expresses that their
profound love is much stronger than the adults' love. Thus, the angels envy them:
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we (27-29).

Through the poem's analysis, we can define that the lover's attitude towards the death of Annabel Lee is
optimistic Undoubtedly, Poe in this poem narrates his own story with his wife. Poe claims in the last stanza
that his beloved never let him. He sees her everywhere in nature like the moon and stars because he ties
with her soul. As if he promised his wife that, he will be faithful towards love that they bore:
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 (Lines 34-41).
Poe's love to his wife is a legend. He once wrote a letter to his fellow George Eveleth just a year after his
wife's death, he said …a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, […] (Stern 29). Stern, Philip Van
Doren. The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. II vols. Penguin Press, 1977, Print.

Edgar Allan Poe and Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee is a rhyming poem with a lilting rhythm Poe penned in May 1849, the year he died. It tells of
the love between two people, one Annabel Lee and the speaker, who is a male persona possibly based on
the poet himself.
Since its publication in October 1849 the poem has grown in popularity and is now one of the best loved of
Poe's gothic romantic work. It has been set to music several times, one of the most recent versions being
that of alternative indie group Sweet Sister Pain.
Edgar Allan Poe's unorthodox upbringing, disjointed family life and love of alcohol have been well
documented since his death. Controversy and intrigue seemed to follow him throughout his short and
agitated life.
Much mystery and folklore blurs the solid fact of his work and romances but there are constants to be
found.
Perhaps his one source of consolation was the love he shared with his younger cousin Virginia Eliza
Clemm, who he married when she was only 13. He was 27. They lived together for 11 years, a relationship
that is said to have been more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
Always fragile, tragedy struck when the young Virginia eventually succumbed to tuberculosis and died in
1847, leaving Poe distraught and without an emotional anchor. Despite his close female friends and
admirers, and the popularity of his creative work, he quickly sank into depression and despondency and
passed away in October 1849.
The poet wrote to a friend:
Each time I felt all the agonies of her death — and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more
dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive — nervous in
a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Annabel Lee remains as one of his attempts to preserve his ideal love. Poe himself always thought:
... the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world –and
equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.” (Poe “The
Philosophy of Composition” 165)
A true romantic, like Dante with his guide Beatrice, Poe is side by side with Annabel Lee, keeping the
spiritual ties alive, transforming his childhood love into something universal, something everyone might
know. But is it wise to suppose that the speaker and the actual poet are one and the same?
In addition to the fairytale like rhyme and rhythm, there is a sense of the supernatural set up in this poem,
with mention of an angelic and demonic order attempting to separate the two lovers.
But the real power lies in the haunting romance, the thought of these two souls still together after all they've
had to endure.
Different Versions Of Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe sent out several written versions of his poem in the summer of 1849, a few months before

his death. Below is a copy of one of these which is now in Columbia University Manuscript Library, New

York. There are several changes to the printed text, in the 2nd stanza (line 7), 4th stanza (line 25) and last

stanza(line 41). The analysis is of the printed 'Griswold' text version.

Annabel Lee Manuscript

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe | Source

Analysis Of Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee is a haunting ballad of a poem, with a wealth of hypnotic rhythm and song-like rhyme. It has a
fairytale air and can also resonate with all who have been in love or felt tragedy and loss.
 The rhythms and rhyme reflect the speaker's obsession with his childhood love; they are often
repeated which helps to reinforce the spiritual connection (whilst echoing the waves and motion of the
sea) which is deep and profound. There is an intensity about this poem that builds up as the stanzas
progress, then subsides, before rebuilding.
The basic theme is that of true love being able to transcend death; nothing can keep these two souls apart,
not even supernatural forces. The two lived for love, for one another. As they lived, so shall they die, next
to each other forever.
The speaker's suggestion is that the reader may know of his Annabel Lee, perhaps a reference to the
universality of her appeal, for she is every woman, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
And so exceptional was this love between the two that the heavenly winged beings, the seraphs (strongly
associated with Christianity) wanted to possess her; she was part of their family, a celestial, so they would
never be satisfied until she was back in the fold.
Supernatural forces were summoned up. Annabel Lee died in unreal circumstances and was laid in a stone
tomb by the sea.
But, despite their child-like relationship, or because of, their love proved stronger than those who were
older and wiser. Their love was beyond religion, beyond good and evil; only they knew - they were true
soul-mates.
The final stanza is rather haunting and conjures up images of a macabre coming together - the grieving
speaker and his Annabel Lee, now a corpse. This is such a vivid picture, the speaker's dream scenario.
Love conquers all, omnia vincit amor - by repeating rhyme in sustained rhythm Poe creates this underlying
hypnotic atmosphere. By varying that rhythm from time to time there is the idea of stumbling, of shock.
Timing is all important in this regard. Momentum has to build and the infectious lines manage this
masterfully.
Perhaps more than anything, emotional energy emerges as the poem progresses, emerging like static, as
sense rubs against rhythm and feelings grow out of simple rhyme. This poem has song-like qualities and it
is this hidden musicality rising and falling that results in a truly powerful poem.

More Analysis of Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee is a rhyming poem with six stanzas, - two sextets, an octet, a sextet, a septet and a final octet,
making 41 lines in total.
Rhyme Scheme
There is a complex rhyme scheme which needs to be fully explored.
 Each stanza is different rhyme-wise, but there is a continuous thread linking all of them, the long
vowel of e. For example, the word sea is in all the stanzas, as is Annabel Lee. This rhyme turns up 21
times throughout the poem and is the linchpin, sometimes repeated.
The overall rhyme scheme: ababcb dbebfb abgbhbib fbabjb ebbebkb lbmbnnbb.
All of the end rhymes are full, for example: ago/know, side/bride. Note how the opening rhyme ago is
repeated in the third stanza and thereafter becomes a kind of echo in the fourth with know. A similar thing
happens to love in the second stanza, a repeated echo coming in the fifth with love/above.
These distant connections help create the atmosphere of feelings, first fading then returning, only to finally
disappear.
There are also unrhymed end words in each of the
stanzas: thought/child/night,came,sepulchre/chilling/soul/dreams,eyes. Why did Edgar Allan Poe leave
these lines floating, without a rhyming partner or repeated rhyme? Poetically, they perhaps represent the
idea of loss, of being alone in all that familiarity. They are outside of the phonic framework.
And note that the shorter lines in the poem all end in the vowel rhyme e: me/sea/Lee/we.

The Meter in Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee has a mix of rhythm within its lines, which makes it a fascinating read. In some stanzas the
steady soft-soft-strong anapest and regular iambs dominate, in others the stumbling, jolting dactyl and
amphibrachs come through. Keep an eye out for the odd trochee. Tetrameter and trimeter carry the bulk of
the feet.
Stanza 1
Let's explore the meter (metre in UK) or scan a few of the lines. The whole of the first stanza:
 It was ma / ny and ma / ny a year / ago,
The first line sets the rhythm for the whole poem. There are three anapests and an iamb, making a total of
four feet with a rhythm of da-da-DUM da-da-DUM da-da-DUM da-DUM. The line therefore scans as an
anapestic tetrameter.
Poe used the anapest a lot in this poem to give it a trip-off-the-tongue feel.
 In a king / dom by / the sea,
Again, an anapest opens and is followed by two iambic feet. This line scans iambic trimeter.
 That a mai / den there lived / whom you / may know
So, two anapestic feet followed by two iambic, a split line.
 By the name / of Anna / bel Lee;
And an anapest, an amphibrach, with one iamb.
 And this mai / den she lived / with no / other thought
Three anapests, the last one separated by an iamb.
 Than to love / and be loved / by me.
Two anapests and an iamb to finish off the first stanza.
Stanza 4
 The an / gels, not half / so happy / in heaven,
An iamb, an anapest and two amphibrachs make this line particularly unusual. This is a real up and down
rhythm, reflecting the sense of the line.
 Went en / vying her / and me:
Two iambs sandwich an anapest.
 Yes! that / was the rea / son (as all / men know,
A dactyl (DUM-DUM) opens this line, bringing emphasis and energy. Two anapests restore the rhythm,
before an iamb steadies and calms.
 In this king / dom by / the sea)
An anapest starts, but the line is iambic trimeter overall.
 That the wind / came out / of the cloud / by night,
Anapest, iamb, anapest, iamb. Tetrameter.
 Chilling / and kill / ing my An / nabel Lee.
An opening trochee pulls no punches before the iambs and anapests bring familiar stability.
Stanza 5
 But our love / it was stron / ger by far / than the love
Anapestic tetrameter.
 Of those / who were old / er than we -
 Of many / far wiser / than we -
Two amphibrachs and an iamb, a slight alteration of the rhythm which continues into:
 And neither / the angels / in Heaven / above
Amphibrachs rule until the iamb rounds the line off.
 Nor the dem / ons down un / der the sea,
It is all anapestic, in trimeter.
 Can ev / er dissev / er my soul / from the soul
An iamb followed by three anapests.
 Of the beau / tiful An / nabel Lee.
Ending with three anapests.
Stanza 6
And now the final stanza:
 For the moon / never beams, / without bring / ing me dreams
This is full anapestic tetrameter, creating a floating lilt some have noted is like a buoy on a soft swell, or
waves folding and forming. The rest of the stanza is in anapest, tetrameter and trimeter.