Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/254

 234 EDGAR ALLAN POE �To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm. �And I lie so composedly, �Now, in my bed, (Knowing her love) �That you fancy me dead And I rest so contentedly, �Now, in my bed, (With her love at my breast) �That you fancy me dead That you shudder to look at me, �Thinking me dead: �But my heart it is brighter �Than all of the many Stars of the sky, �For it sparkles with Annie It glows with the light �Of the love of my Annie With the thought of the light �Of the eyes of my Annie. �ANNABEL LEE (1849) �[The reference is of course to Poe's wife and the poem ought to lay forever the absurd contention that Poe never really loved her, that his devotion was "rather of the nature of family affection than of wed- ded love." Love is here associated not with a rare flower, a strain of music, a familiar haunt, etc., but with the elemental, the universal, the rhythmically re- current with moon and stars. The Scotch critic, John Nichol, in his American Literature (1882), says of that part of Lowell's Bigloiv Papers, second series, beginning, �Under the yaller-pines I house, �"This [to the close], not the Commemoration Ode, is the author's masterpiece. I set it beside Annabel Lee, and regard these two poems, totally different though ��� �