With insistent meter and captivating rhyme schemes, Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven" are both very similar. However, in their views of love, namely the loss and mourning of beautiful women, they differ greatly. Through analysis of the two poems, the reader observes that whom Poe had chosen for a speaker, the tone and the sound effects are all factors in both poems that make two poems with a similar theme contrast. Both poems mean the same thing and follow the same theme or "melancholy topic" as Poe called it in his essay. They both depict a speaker...
optimistic and the other horrific.

Each poem depicts a lover grieving. The speaker in "The Raven" has been nearly moved to madness by his grief and heartache. While it is understood that the speaker in "Annabel Lee" is also grieving, one finds that he has comforted himself by allowing himself to know that she will always be with him, even though her body is in her grave. Through taking the same story and writing it twice, but with different tone, meter, and sound effects, and changing the names a bit, Edgar Allan Poe has sold the same poem twice.