“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams….”

Will Duquette links a great post about the poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, which happens to be one of my favorite poems as well — there’s some very troubling psychology concealed in that poem’s lilting meter and rhyme.

Back when I was doing “Poetical Excursions” as a semi-regular feature here (and which I keep intending to start doing again), I wrote about “Annabel Lee” myself. And in fact, that post still shows up a lot in search-engine referrals to Byzantium’s Shores, often spiking in September and October, or January and February — when undergrads taking “Poetry 101” or some such college course are probably encountering the poem.