Annabel Lee

The poem's narrator describes his love for Annabel Lee, which began many years ago in an unnamed "kingdom by the sea." Though they were young, their love for one another burned with such an intensity that angels became jealous. For that reason, the narrator believes, she was killed. Even so, their love is strong enough that it extends beyond the grave and the narrator believes their two souls are still entwined. Every night, he dreams of Annabel Lee and sees the brightness in her eyes in the stars. He admits that every night he lies down by her side in her tomb by the sea.

It is unclear who the eponymous character Annabel Lee is referring to. It may have been written for Poe's wife Virginia, who had died two years prior, as was suggested by poet Frances Sargent Osgood, though Osgood herself is a candidate for the poem's inspiration. A strong case can be made for Poe's wife Virginia: she was the one he loved as a child, and the only one that had been his bride, and the only one that had died. Critics, including T.O. Mabbott, believed that Annabel Lee was merely the product of Poe's gloomy imagination and that Annabel Lee was no real person in particular. A childhood sweetheart of Poe's named Sarah Elmira Royster believed the poem was written with her in mind and that Poe himself said so.Sarah Helen Whitman and Sarah Anna Lewis also claimed to have inspired the poem. There is also discussion in Charleston, South Carolina, about the real life Annabel Lee being buried in the Unitarian Graveyard on King Street and the poem derived from a story he had heard in his youth. The church denies any correlation, though much of their records were destroyed during the Civil War. Local superstition persists; there is both a "Lee" family plot, as well as a mysterious tomb marked "A.L. Ravenel" that predates 1827 when Poe would have been stationed there (the Ravenels are an old Charleston family)