1. It was many and many a year ago,
2. In a kingdom by the sea,
3. That a maiden there lived whom you may know
4. By the name of Annabel Lee;--
5. And this maiden she lived with no other thought
6. Than to love and be loved by me.
7. I was a child and she was a child,
8. In this kingdom by the sea;
9. But we loved with a love that was more than love--
10. I and my Annabel Lee--
11. With a love that the wing�d seraphs in Heaven
12. Coveted her and me.
13. And this was the reason that, long ago,
14. In this kingdom by the sea,
15. A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
16. My beautiful Annabel Lee;
17. So that her high-born kinsmen came
18. And bore her away from me,
19. To shut her up in a sepulchre,
20. In this kingdom by the sea.
21. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
22. Went envying her and me--
23. Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
24. In this kingdom by the sea)
25. That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
26. Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
27. But our love it was stronger by far than the love
28. Of those who were older than we--
29. Of many far wiser than we--
30. And neither the angels in Heaven above,
31. Nor the demons down under the sea,
32. Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
33. Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--
34. For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
35. Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
36. And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
37. Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--
38. And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
39. Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
40. In her sepulchre there by the sea--
41. In her tomb by the sounding sea.
1. Original Text: Edgar Allan Poe, Works, ed. R. W. Griswold, II (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1850), 27-28. For a later version (Sept. 1849), see
Collected Work of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1969), I,
478-79; and George E. Woodberry, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, II (1909): opp. p. 352.
2. First Publication Date: 1849.
3. Composition Date: by May 1849
4. Line 7. A manuscript version written Sept. 26, 1849, reverses "I" and "she" (George Edward Woodberry, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe [Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1909], II, 352). Never content unless tinkering, Poe this time did not improve his work (e.g., line 41).
5. Line 15. cloud, chilling: the manuscript version of Sept. 26 reads "cloud by night".
6. Line 16. My beautiful: the manuscript version of Sept. 26 reads "Chilling my".
7. Line 17. kinsmen: "kinsman" in the 1850 edition.
8. Line 25. cloud by night: the manuscript version of Sept. 26 reads "cloud, chilling".
9. Line 26. Chilling and killing: the manuscript version of Sept. 26 reads "And killing".
10. Line 33. Possibly indebted to the Episcopal funeral service and its use of Romans 8:38-39: "For I am persuaded, that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any
other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (cited by Thomas Ollive
Mabbott, Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969], I,
481).
11. Line 36. feel: the manuscript version of Sept. 26 reads "see".
12. Line 41. by the sounding sea: the manuscript version of Sept. 26 reads "by 13. the side of the sea".