Sticking with the theme for this month (which I’ve only just now decided was a theme for this month), here in National Poetry Month, I’ll continue exploring the intersection of music and poetry. Back when I was a serious music student, I sometimes thought about setting favorite poems to music, including what is likely my favorite poem of all time, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. This complex and meaning-laden poem has thrilled me ever since I first read it, likely in 11th grade:
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 wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this 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 highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
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.
So when I went searching for settings of “Annabel Lee”, one of the first ones I discovered was…a bluegrass setting.
And it works. Listen for yourself!
See, that was more of a one-time thing….
I’m not like many Americans when it comes to the “Founding Fathers”. I do not fall a dead-faint at their feet, the way many of my fellow Americans do. I find that sort of thing fairly performative, and I get a bit irritated whenever a political discussion is raging and the Founding Fathers are invoked: “What would the Founders think of [policy]?” It is fun, though, to see the sputtering that invariably results when I respond, “I don’t care about the Founders.”
We love to get all weepy and lump-in-throat about the Declaration of Independence, but really, we only pretend to get moved about very few of the actual words in that document. Right now, the important stuff probably isn’t the flowery first couple of paragraphs and the “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness” stuff, or the truths we hold to be “self-evident”, because honestly, nothing in recent American history suggests that we hold any of those truths to be evident at all, much less SELF-evident.
Right now the relevant part of the Declaration seems to actually be that long section that comes AFTER the flowery stuff, which is the long list of things that George III did that had those colonists thinking it was time to dissolve the political bonds, et cetera. Particularly interesting, in light of very recent events and the current administration’s activities, are these two items:
How interesting to find those two things among the list of issues the Colonists had with their Royal government.
Like I said above, I’ve never been one to factor the Founders much into my political thinking–I see no logical reason why political thought in 2025 should be governed by that of a few rich white guys who lived closer to Shakespeare’s time than our own–but that doesn’t mean they’re useless, though. There are still lessons to be found in those dusty old documents, I think.