Annabel Lee By Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
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—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
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,
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.
This has been and always will be my favorite poem. After reading Throam for the first time and seeing that volume three was titled A Kingdom By the Sea, well, I came back and analyzed the poem again, and honestly now it just makes my heart ache even harder for Ryan and Brendon’s relationship in the story. I’ve never been one to be able to interpret poetry correctly (I was a terrible English student in high school) but to me the sense of their love being a special kind - a love that no one else can ever understand, an inhuman amount of love - comes across clearly. It’s the reason I connect this poem to the story so much, especially now that I’m reading this over again.
No matter what happened to Ryan and Brendon in Throam, no matter what they went through, they still loved each other. Years and years of being apart didn’t even sever that.
“I knew no one can change that much. Because I knew him, and he knew me, and the specifics can change but the core of a person remains the same. And it’s that that has brought him back to me.”
