Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allan Poe, is my favorite poem ever written, at least so far in my life. It’s moving and touching and horribly sad and not only is it beautiful to listen to, the words are so carefully chosen as to make certain that each on its own is beautiful as well. It stuck with me, I guess, because it only took me part of a morning to memorize it, and it has come in handy several times- it’s always nice to have something to start babbling in your head when a) there’s something happening you don’t want to hear, b) you’re bored, or c) you are randomly called up in front of a group of people and told to speak. But anyway, it’s beautiful, and here it is:
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
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-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
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 kinsman 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,
Went envying her and me-
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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Isn’t that terribly sad? But I love it. Poe’s words are fantastic and heartbreaking. You can hear a wonderful reading of the poem at Matthew Gray Gubler . com – just click “Kgube Radio”, then “Stories”, and it should be the first. Listen to it, I urge you. It’s beautifully done.
All this to say, I am going to be studying Edgar Allan Poe in the next month or so, perhaps longer, and so I thought I’d start with this. 
Lydia