The ballads Annabel Lee, written by Edgar Allan Poe, and the anonymous The Unquiet Grave, collected by F.J. Child, are both centred on the sentiments of the death of a lover and the difficulty of moving on from mourning over the loss. In this essay I will discuss how, despite being in the same verse form, these two poems produce different effects.
In Annabel Lee, Poe uses conventions of fairy tales and creates an eerie, mystical supernatural air. The poem starts off with It was many and many a years ago, immediately setting the tone of a fairy-tale and the background of a kingdom by the sea, which will be religiously repeated throughout the poem, creating a hypnotic haze around a gothic romantic world. Images of the sea and the seraphs and demons are part of that charm, and Poe manages to tell a story that is very unique, almost put on a pedestal.
The…(short extract)