![]() ![]() Precisely who the inspiration for the character of ‘Annabel Lee’ was remains a mystery, although Poe’s cousin, whom he fell in love with when she was thirteen, is the leading candidate. This seems like a fitting poem to conclude this list of Poe’s greatest poems, since it was the last poem he completed before his untimely death in 1849. Part Gothic poem and part fantasy, this poem tells of an underwater city ruled by Death himself: ‘Death has reared himself a throne / In a strange city lying alone / Far down within the dim West, / Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best / Have gone to their eternal rest…’ ![]() This is another Poe poem which was originally written when he was still in his early twenties, in 1831, but was rewritten for publication in 1845. Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best This poem may well have had its origins in Poe’s own troubled life, his battle with alcoholism, and his bouts of depression. This is a haunted palace because, whilst it is beautiful, it is also inhabited by ‘evil things, in robes of sorrow’ which ‘assailed the monarch’s high estate’. The palace of this poem is a palace of the mind, found in ‘the monarch Thought’s dominion’. ![]()
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