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What are the subject, tone, and mood of Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee"?

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Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" features a speaker mourning his lost love. The poem's tone is wistful and melancholic but rises to a confident determination. The mood echoes the tone in a haunting melancholy that moves into a paradoxical grandeur.

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In Edgar Allan Poe's haunting poem "Annabel Lee," the speaker recalls his love for Annabel Lee. Far away, in a "kingdom by the sea," the speaker and his bride "loved with a love that was more than love" until death stole her from him. He speculates on the reason for his beloved's death and determines that the angels in Heaven, who had so envied the couple for their love, must have caused the wind that "blew out of a cloud" and killed Annabel Lee. Now the speaker meditates on his love and lies down by the tomb of Annabel Lee near the "sounding sea."

The poem's tone is melancholic and wistful as the speaker recalls his lost love and broods on his physical separation from Annabel Lee. "It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea," he begins, and the melancholy increases as the speaker describes the death of his beloved.

Yet the tone shifts at the end as the speaker expresses a determination and a confidence that his love is still strong and his bond with Annabel Lee still exists. He dreams of her and feels her eyes on him as he looks at the stars. Further, he asserts,

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.

The poem's mood (the emotions it inspires in the reader) is haunting and melancholic as readers follow the speaker's emotions throughout the poem, rising and falling with him as he describes the love he has not quite lost. The mood rises to a paradoxical grandeur at the end as readers picture the speaker's loyalty to Annabel Lee as he lies down by her tomb and declares to her to be "my darling—my darling—my life and my bride."

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