“Annabel Lee”, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, and recited by me.

“Annabel Lee”, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe is one of my all-time favourites. I am a very emotional person, so every time I read it I am saddened and tears come to my eyes, yet I continue to read it from time to time, perhaps to feel and appreciate the eternal love in it.

Here in this post, I am presenting a narration of the poem by me which I uploaded to YouTube. Surely not a very good narration, but the best I could do. I wish it would convey the strong and lovely feelings in it, at least to some extent. Towards the end of this article, I have also included the text of this poem.

“Annabel Lee”, the lyric poem by Edgar Allan Poe was published in the New York Tribune on 9th October 1849, two days after his death. It is written in memory of his young wife and cousin, Virginia, who died in 1847. The poem expresses one of Poe’s recurrent themes - the death of a young, beautiful, and dearly beloved woman.

They say "Till death do us part", but for enduring love, it transcends over death to conclude that "even death can't separate lovers". People who stay loving their beloved despite permanent absence are great and grand lovers who manifest true love. And the feelings of Edgar Allan Poe in this poem are splendid and at the same time heartrending:

My narration of the Poem:

THE POEM:

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.