Beth+McNamara+-+Edgar+Allen+Poe

=**Edgar Allen Poe **=


 * POEm 1: "Annabel Lee" **

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 winged seraphs of heaven

12 Coveted her and me.

13 And this was the reason that, long ago,

14 In this kingdom by the sea,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">15 A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">16 My beautiful Annabel Lee;

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">17 So that her highborn kinsman came

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">18 And bore her away from me,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">19 To shut her up in a sepulchre

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">20 In this kingdom by the sea.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">21 The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">22 Went envying her and me--

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">23 Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">24 In this kingdom by the sea)

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">25 That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">26 Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">27 But our love it was stronger by far than the love

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">28 Of those who were older than we--

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">29 Of many far wiser than we--

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">30 And neither the angels in heaven above,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">31 Nor the demons down under the sea,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">32 Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">33 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">34 For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">35 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">36 And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">37 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">38 And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">39 Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">40 In her sepulchre there by the sea,

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">41 In her tomb by the sounding sea.

“Annabel Lee” expresses its speaker’s heartache and despair for his deceased young lover for whom the poem is named. Poe is believed to have written it in memory of his lost love who passed at a young age, Virginia Clemm. He perhaps uses the more poetic-sounding name “Annabel Lee” instead of the cacophonous “Clem” in order to work with his rhyme scheme, ending each of the short lines of the poem with a pleasant, fluid “ee” sound. He pairs up long and short lines throughout the six stanzas, and this technique in conjunction with the rhyme scheme conveys a flowing, dreamlike tone and portrays the image of the ideal, beautiful seaside love described in the poem with the stanzas appearing and sounding like the waves of an ocean. Additionally, Poe does not stick to one straightforward meter but varies his meter throughout the stanzas, most often beginning a line with an anapest (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable) and finishing it off using iambs (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) as seen in the poem’s first line. The poem’s first stanza describes a time long ago in a “kingdom by the sea” in which the young and beautiful Annabel Lee, the speaker’s lover, lived. The line “a kingdom by the sea” not only provides a mysterious, fairytale-like image of a distant mythical seaside land where young love flourishes but also serves as the refrain of the poem due to its repetitions throughout the remainder of its stanzas. This world however is tainted by the terrible and fatal events of Annabel’s death. The reader can assume the kingdom is home to powerful figures, such as the “highborn kinsman” that rob the speaker of Annabel’s dead body and bury her in this kingdom, which is clearly not as lovely and beautiful as it appears on the surface. If the “kingdom” symbolizes the powerful people working against his love, then the “sea” symbolizes the evil of the natural world. This ocean is not a beautiful, picturesque one but a gruesome, malicious underworld filled with the “demons” mentioned in line 31. It is an appropriate place for Annabel to be buried by “her high born kinsman” that “shut her up in a sepulchre,” which creates an eerie, hissing “s”-sound alliteration with the “sea” that ends the stanza in the next line. In <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">line 41 Poe closes the poem with a similar “s”-sound alliteration, leaving the reader with the ominous, echoing image of the “sounding sea.” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%;">What had murdered Annabel, however, are the envious dark angels of heaven who covet the speaker’s love and send down a wind blowing “out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.” At the poem’s close, the speaker reveals to the reader that he lies nightly by Annabel’s tomb, implying that his love for her truly is more powerful than death and that young love can in fact be the truest and most conquering love of all.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">POEm 2: "Dream-Land" **

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">1 By a route obscure and lonely, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">2 Haunted by ill angels only, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">3 Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">4 On a black throne reigns upright, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">5 I have reached these lands but newly <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">6 From an ultimate dim Thule— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">7 From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">8 Out of SPACE— out of TIME.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">9 Bottomless vales and boundless floods, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">10 And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">11 With forms that no man can discover <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">12 For the tears that drip all over; <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">13 Mountains toppling evermore <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">14 Into seas without a shore; <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">15 Seas that restlessly aspire, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">16 Surging, unto skies of fire; <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">17 Lakes that endlessly outspread <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">18 Their lone waters— lone and dead,— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">19 Their still waters— still and chilly <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">20 With the snows of the lolling lily.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">21 By the lakes that thus outspread <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">22 Their lone waters, lone and dead,— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">23 Their sad waters, sad and chilly <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">24 With the snows of the lolling lily,— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">25 By the mountains— near the river <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">26 Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">27 By the grey woods,— by the swamp <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">28 Where the toad and the newt encamp— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">29 By the dismal tarns and pools

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">30 Where dwell the Ghouls,— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">31 By each spot the most unholy— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">32 In each nook most melancholy— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">33 There the traveller meets aghast <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">34 Sheeted Memories of the Past— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">35 Shrouded forms that start and sigh <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">36 As they pass the wanderer by— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">37 White—robed forms of friends long given, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">38 In agony, to the Earth— and Heaven.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">39 For the heart whose woes are legion <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">40 'Tis a peaceful, soothing region— <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">41 For the spirit that walks in shadow <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">42 'Tis— oh, 'tis an Eldorado! <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">43 But the traveller, travelling through it, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">44 May not— dare not openly view it! <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">45 Never its mysteries are exposed <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">46 To the weak human eye unclosed; <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">47 So wills its King, who hath forbid <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">48 The uplifting of the fringed lid; <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">49 And thus the sad Soul that here passes <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">50 Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">51 By a route obscure and lonely, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">52 Haunted by ill angels only, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">53 Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">54 On a black throne reigns upright, <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">55 I have wandered home but newly <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">56 From this ultimate dim Thule.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Dream-land” describes through its six stanzas a chilling, eerie world that the reader escapes to in sleep that has a lonely, still yet simultaneously alive and surging landscape where he is comforted by the ghosts of lost loved ones. Poe stays close to consistent with its meter, utilizing a trochaic tetrameter (four pairs of syllables per line with emphasis on the first syllable in each pair) that conveys a haunting DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da rhythm that could signify how the speaker is slightly losing his mind to his depression and deeply wishes to stay forever lost in the surreality of his dreamworld. The first stanza states that the speaker travels “from an ultimate dim Thule,” which means some dark place beyond the edge of the earth to a place guarded by “an Eidolon, named NIGHT,” or a dark phantom. The juxtaposition used when describing the path he travel as being “haunted by ill angels” sets up a spooky, surprising, and unheard of world inside of the reader’s mind, as on normally does not associate angels as demonic creatures. The next stanza provides mysterious imagery of the dreamworld that is almost impossible to comprehend or visualize, describing its “seas that restlessly aspire, surging unto skies of fire.” The third stanza begins by recapping the second, but a shift is made around line 27, “by the grey woods,- by the swamp,” as the speaker begins to dwell deeper and deeper into a new part of the world that is swamp-like with creatures and ghouls, like a dream rapidly shifts from one place to the next. By stanza 4 the speaker is deep into the world where “Sheeted Memories of the Past” exist, and in line 37, the emotional apex of the poem, the speaker reveals that these ghosts are his dead friends. Ironically, in the fifth stanza the speaker reveals that he considers the world to be “an Eldorado,” which alludes to a mythical city of gold, a utopian heaven-on-earth for those whose troubles are too great to emotionally handle in reality. He also states, however, that he is still aware that these figures can only be seen and experienced “through darkened glasses,” implying that he realizes these figures are merely impressions meant only to provide temporary relief and comfort to the weary traveller. Stanza 6 begins with the repeated refrain found in the first stanza and ends with the speaker traveling back home, but the reader is left unsure as to whether or not the speaker is happy or depressed to be leaving his “Eldorado.”

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