I'm not huge on poetry. But I do like to write and sometimes that's how my thoughts come out. I don't really have favorite poets either. But when I come across something that really catches my attention and makes me ponder it, I never forget it. Annabel Lee did that to me the first time I read it. Edgar Allan Poe was a writing genius, and this is one of may favorite poems by him. Annabel Lee is haunting and romantic and tragic and depressing and inspiring and makes my heart beat fast. I love it. Read it out loud, it's even better that way.

My absolute favorite part is the first five lines of the last stanza. I can't even say why. It's just the feeling that I get when I read that part. The devotion and love it expresses. It gives me something almost like an adrenaline rush. But not the I-can-lift-a-car kind of adrenaline. A different kind. It's just exciting. But not like jumping-up-and-down-exciting. Thrilling is probably a better word. Maybe that's silly. To feel so strongly about words a man wrote over 150 years ago. But I'm alright with that.

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 wingéd seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And the 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 high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away,
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 her sepulchre there by the sea –
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

– Edgar Allan Poe