I was no Annabel Lee

[scribal_goddess]

I tell you a tale of when I was a child

In a kingdom by the sea

Where I lived as a young girl, wild

And from envy I was free.

*

I was a child and he was a child,

In that kingdom by the sea,

And I loved the world with a passion fierce -

For I was no Annabel Lee -

With a love that burned, and so he yearned

To extinguish that love in me.

*

And this was the reason (which no one knows)

In the kingdom by the sea,

Poison was poured in my ears by him

Who called me his Annabel Lee.

I had no highborn kinsmen to

Carry me far from he,

For he wished me shut in a sepulcher

In his kingdom by the sea.

*

I had thought that the angels singing in Heaven,

Were not half so happy as we –

Yet the reason – I think – that he sank so low

Was simply his jealousy,

For the wind that sang in my ear by night

Had called secrets only to me.

*

My love of the world was stronger by far

Than the love he claimed to hold for me -

Or any I'd held for him, so he 

Sent me down amidst the bones 

And refused to set me free.

And no soul could find me there and from

His poisoned words dissever me.

*

And the birds that he kept in their prisons wept,

For the days they were wild and free,

And the souls that he bound in dark ribbons ‘round

Moaned their grief-dark tales to me

And so I sought my escape and as I fought

With tooth and nail, inch by inch I brought

Down my sepulcher by the sea.

*

For I am no Annabel Lee.

Well, I opened up my brain and this fell out, and I felt like it was better not to stuff it back in, so... yeah. I ripped off Poe and it doesn't scan quite right but I am going to go watch the Geminids now and no power in the 'Verse can stop me. Changes to the rhythm and scansion from Poe's Annabel Lee are either deliberate or the product of me being not a poet. Have a feild day, guys, I'm of to watch stars shoot out of Gemini and Orion.

Also, LJ, your formatting for spacing sucks hairy monkey toes.

Comments

[mzyra.livejournal.com]

I don't know the Poe poem (Poe-m, lol), but this is lovely and I'm imagining it wonderfully ^.^ Kudos!

[scribal-goddess.livejournal.com]

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151

That should get you aquainted with this. Thanks! :)

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

*cries great big tears of cryingness* It's beautiful, and I feel you so hard. *hugs*

How did the star shooting watching go?

[scribal-goddess.livejournal.com]

It got cloudy - I saw about two or three but the parents didn't see any. Helped that I was the one who knew where Gemini actually was. We saw more when we walked the dog at about 7:30 last night - I saw one on our way through the park and another when we got home.

I think Poe will forgive me. (That or chase me down and eat my brains - always a possibility.) :)

[kiri celebkiriedhel (from livejournal.com)]

Poe will not eat your brains - this is too cool. And I love it. And I think you have some poet in your popcorn!

[scribal-goddess.livejournal.com]

Aww, thanks. :) (It's my secret ingredient - you can't just add salt and butter.)

[dinuriel.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about poetry, but I really enjoyed this one. I actually think it's better than the original--the idea of someone "with no other thought than to love and be loved by [anyone]" never sat right with me, so I never could really appreciate that poem (Poe's "The Raven", on the other hand, is one of the few poems that have ever stuck with me). I like how your poem is more or less a commentary on that too. :)

Is it true that LJ has forced users to their new editor now? I've been procrastinating a post out of sheer dread since I read that on someone's journal. It took me long enough to get used to the new Blogger! o_O

[scribal-goddess.livejournal.com]

The thing that gets me about the new editor is the fact that cuts function identically to spoilers and it's an extra step now to embed non-lj pictures. Not so much a problem for me, since mostly I publish in slideshows, but I can only imagine how many extra clicks it is for people who put all the pictures in here and host them on photobucket and the like. I've gotten mostly used to it by now I guess, but I woke up sometime in November and was like "huh, I don't remember these buttons."

Not that I'm spreading horror stories - it's not too bad compared to what they've done to the friends page.

*Blushes* Thank you. Annabel Lee and The Raven were my introduction to Poe and to poetry. I didn't notice until I was much older how obsessive the speaker in the poem could come off if you thought about it. This take on the poem might have been, when I wrote it, a little more ... autobiographical than commentary, but hey - this is what they do to literature and poetry. They interpret the hell out of them. :) (I'm the terror of poetry teachers everywhere because I get to whatever they weren't going to teach in a poem and make sure that the class sticks to it. I don't know too much about poetry beyond what's good and bad, though.)

Glad to see you around, Van!