Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allan Poe

“Annabel Lee” is Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 ballad in which a man mourns the girl he loved when they were children, blames jealous angels for her death, and lies beside her tomb every night. The 41-line poem, one of the last Poe wrote, was first published on October 9, 1849, in the New-York Daily Tribune, two days after his death.

Our reading is that the poem is both a true love elegy and a portrait of grief that has tipped into obsession. Its lullaby music makes a man sleeping in a tomb sound like the purest devotion, and Poe never tells us which reading is right.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker remembers a love from long ago in a fairy-tale “kingdom by the sea.” He and Annabel Lee were children, and they loved each other so completely that the angels in heaven envied them. That envy, he insists, is why she died: a wind blew out of a cloud and chilled her, and her highborn relatives carried her body away to a tomb by the sea.

Death has not ended his love. Neither angels above nor demons below can separate their souls, and the moon and stars remind him of her every night. The poem ends with the speaker telling us that he lies down each night beside her in her tomb by the sea.

The Poem

The text below follows the poem’s first printing, in the New-York Daily Tribune of October 9, 1849, as transcribed by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

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 wingëd 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.

Background

Poe wrote “Annabel Lee” in May 1849, a few months before his death. He handed out several copies: one to his literary executor, Rufus Griswold, one to John R. Thompson of the Southern Literary Messenger, and one he sold to John Sartain for Sartain’s Union Magazine. Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, and two days later Griswold printed the poem in his hostile obituary of Poe in the New-York Daily Tribune. The Southern Literary Messenger ran it in November, and Sartain’s published its authorized version in January 1850, complaining that the poem it had paid for was already “going the rounds” of the newspapers.

Because Poe circulated several manuscripts, the early printings differ in small ways. Some begin the second stanza “She was a child and I was a child,” and some end with “In her tomb by the side of the sea.” The Tribune text, with “I was a child and she was a child” and “the sounding sea,” is the version most readers know.

Readers have long connected the poem to Poe’s wife, Virginia Clemm, whom he married in 1836 when she was 13 and who died of tuberculosis in January 1847 at 24. Other candidates have been proposed, including his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster and the poets Frances Sargent Osgood and Sarah Helen Whitman, and the Poe scholar T. O. Mabbott thought Annabel Lee was simply a creation of Poe’s imagination. The death of a beautiful woman was Poe’s great subject, which he called “the most poetical topic in the world” in his 1846 essay “The Philosophy of Composition.”

Analysis and Themes

“Annabel Lee” is loved as a tender elegy, and it can be read that way with nothing lost. But this is the author of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and the poem rewards a more suspicious ear: read closely, its devotion shades into obsession, and its music makes a disturbing ending sound beautiful.

Love Stronger Than Death

Take the poem first at its most sincere, because that reading is real. It idealizes a love so early and so complete that it came before adulthood, “I was a child and she was a child,” and was stronger than the love “Of those who were older than we.” It claims that bond cannot be broken by anything in heaven or hell. Read as Poe mourning his young wife, the promise that she is still present in the moon and the stars every night is deeply moving, and the darker reading grows out of that tenderness rather than canceling it.

The Angels Did It

Now listen to how the speaker explains her death. She did not simply fall ill. The angels, “not half so happy in heaven,” grew jealous of the lovers and sent the wind that killed her. His insistence gives him away: the triumphant “Yes!,” the appeal to what “all men know,” the need to tell the story twice. Read generously, this is romantic hyperbole. Read warily, it is a grieving mind that cannot accept an ordinary death and invents a cosmic one, in which his love was so great that heaven could not bear it.

The Man in the Tomb

Then comes the ending, which polite readings hurry past. The speaker does not visit a grave or keep a memory. Every night, he lies down beside her in the sepulchre. He also speaks of her possessively throughout, “my Annabel Lee,” “my darling,” “my life and my bride,” and describes her burial as a theft by the kinsmen who “bore her away from me.” The love the poem celebrates is also a refusal to let another person go, even into the ground. That Poe makes this sound like the height of devotion is why the poem lingers.

Form and Technique

Poe called “Annabel Lee” a ballad, and Sartain’s printed it with the subtitle “A Ballad.” It has 41 lines in six stanzas of six, six, eight, six, seven, and eight lines. The lines mix anapests and iambs, usually alternating four beats and three, as in “it was MAN-y and MAN-y a YEAR a-GO, / in a KING-dom by the SEA.” There is no fixed rhyme scheme, but nearly every stanza returns to a single sound, the long “ee” of “sea,” “Lee,” “me,” and “we,” and the phrase “kingdom by the sea” recurs five times.

That closed, repeating sound works like a lullaby or an incantation, and it enacts the speaker’s fixation: the poem cannot get away from Annabel Lee any more than he can. The fairy-tale diction of “maiden,” “kingdom,” and “highborn kinsmen” adds to the nursery-rhyme feel. In the last stanza, the internal rhymes pile up, “beams” with “dreams,” “rise” with “eyes,” “tide” with “side,” so the poem is at its most musical just as the speaker lies down in a tomb.

Notable Lines

These passages carry the poem from idealized love to cosmic grievance to its unsettling close.

But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—

Lines 9 to 10

The poem’s central claim. “A love that was more than love” means almost nothing as a statement and everything as a feeling, and the possessive “my” is the first hint of how completely the speaker claims her.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—

Lines 21 to 22

The turn into grievance. Grief rearranges the universe into a story in which heaven itself killed out of jealousy, either the grandest compliment a lover ever paid or a sign that the speaker can no longer accept what happened.

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.

Lines 38 to 41

The ending. Under the lullaby rhythm, the speaker tells us he sleeps each night beside a corpse, and the repeated “sea” tolls like surf against the shore.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem.

Love beyond death. The speaker insists that nothing, not angels or demons or the grave, can separate his soul from hers. The poem’s central promise is that true love outlasts death.

Grief and obsession. The same devotion can be read as a refusal to let go. By the end, the living man has in effect moved into the tomb.

Innocence and youth. The lovers were children, and their love is presented as purer than that of older, wiser people. Youth makes the loss more painful and the love more ideal.

Jealousy and fate. The speaker blames envious angels and highborn kinsmen, casting the death as an act of cosmic and social jealousy rather than chance.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “Annabel Lee.”

What is “Annabel Lee” about?

It is about a man mourning the girl he loved when they were both children in a “kingdom by the sea.” He believes jealous angels caused her death, insists their souls can never be separated, and lies beside her tomb every night.

How did Annabel Lee die?

According to the speaker, a cold wind blew out of a cloud at night and chilled and killed her, and he blames the angels, who envied the lovers’ happiness. The poem suggests an illness like a fever or consumption, and many readers connect it to the death of Poe’s wife, Virginia, from tuberculosis.

Was Annabel Lee a real person?

Not exactly. Annabel Lee is a character, but most readers believe Poe was thinking of his wife, Virginia Clemm, who died in 1847 at 24. Other women in his life have been suggested, and Poe never identified her.

When was “Annabel Lee” written and published?

Poe wrote it in May 1849. It was first published on October 9, 1849, in the New-York Daily Tribune, two days after his death, and Sartain’s Union Magazine printed its authorized version in January 1850.

What type of poem is “Annabel Lee”?

It is a ballad, a song-like narrative poem with a refrain, and it is also an elegy for a lost love. Its rhymes keep returning to the “ee” sound of “sea” and “Lee” rather than following a fixed scheme.

Glossary

A few words carry the poem’s fairy-tale and funereal weight.

• wingëd (line 11): Winged, printed with a mark to show it is pronounced in two syllables.
• seraphs (line 11): The highest order of angels, associated with burning love.
• highborn kinsmen (line 17): Her noble relatives.
• sepulchre (line 19): A tomb or burial vault, especially one cut in rock or built of stone.
• dissever (line 32): Separate completely.
• night-tide (line 38): Nighttime; “tide” in its old sense of “time,” as in “eventide.”

In Popular Culture

The poem has echoed through fiction and music.

Vladimir Nabokov built Lolita (1955) around the poem. Humbert Humbert’s lost childhood love is named Annabel Leigh, their romance takes place in “a princedom by the sea,” and the novel’s working title was The Kingdom by the Sea.

Joan Baez sang a setting of the poem on her 1967 album Joan, and Stevie Nicks recorded her own “Annabel Lee” for In Your Dreams (2011).

Related Poems

If this poem holds you, these are good to read next.

• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Poe’s most famous poem, in which grief for a lost woman, Lenore, drives the speaker into despair with no consolation at all.
• Lenore by Edgar Allan Poe: An earlier elegy for a young woman who died too soon, and a dress rehearsal for the themes of “Annabel Lee.”
• Remember by Christina Rossetti: The mirror image of Poe’s mourner, a dying woman who gently releases the living from grief.
• Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson: An American vision of death met with calm composure, the opposite of Poe’s feverish refusal.