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Edgar Allen Poe’s enduring talent and mastery for merging despair and romance is reflected in his well- known love poem, “Annabel Lee”.  It is a beautifully haunting poem portraying his undying love for Annabel.  Poe and Annabel loved “With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven/Coveted her and me” (ll. 11-12).  “Annabel Lee” is about a love that surpasses time and death where they “loved with a love that was more than love” (l. 9).  “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie is a song that Poe could listen to over and over while dreaming about his beloved, Annabel Lee.  Poe’s poem and this song contain several similarities, one being that love has an eternal quality.  Poe writes, “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” (ll. 30-33).  Even in death, nothing, not even heaven or hell, can diminish the love they shared.  Poe is proclaiming that their love is so intense that they will be united in eternity.  Similarly, Death Cab for Cuties sings “No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white /Just our hands clasped so tight”.  Just like in “Annabel Lee”, the lyrics imply that even when the lovers reach heaven sang says,  “tunnels to gates of white”, they cannot be torn apart.  Their hands, or in other words, their hearts will remain “clasped so tight”.  Not only the themes but the structure and flow of these two works are reminiscent of each other.  The cadence of “Anabelle Lee” gives the poem a melodic quality that, when read, is almost like singing.  The simplicity of the vocal track, paired with a stripped-down acoustic guitar, makes “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” sound almost like a poem. 

Another song Poe may relate to is “Undenied” by Portishead.  I think Poe would not only appreciate the lyrics to this song but also the image that the music creates.  The song starts with a somber ringing, resembling a bell buoy on a dark night at sea.  The music creates a bleak and gloomy atmosphere not unlike Annabel’s “sepulcher by the sea” (Poe l. 40).  The singer’s voice is kind of soft and unsteady like someone who has just lost a loved one.  The slow consistent beat echoes the melancholy rhythm of Poe’s rhymes.  Portishead sings “Your softly spoken words release my whole desire” and Poe writes “she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me” (ll. 5-6).  The singer and the poet are both talking about being so immersed in their relationships that nothing else matters.  It is their “whole desire” and think of nothing else than the love between them.  In “Undenied” the author writes of how overwhelming the feeling of loss is when she sings “How can I Carry on for so bare is my heart, I can't hide”.  Though Poe certainly must have felt this way, he chooses instead to continue to see his and Annabel Lee’s  love in the nature around him.  This is evident when writes, “For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams /Of the beautiful Annabel Lee” and again when he says, “And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes/Of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (Poe ll.34-37).  I think Poe could really relate to the feeling of loss that is evident in the song “Undenied”.  

Though Anne Bradstreet did not lose her love to death, she did experience a loss through geographical separation.  In the poem, “A Letter to her Husband, Absent Upon Public Appointment”, Anne refers to herself as “Cancer” and pleads for her husband to “Return, return, sweet Sol,from Capricorn” (l.12).  She symbolizes their physical distance, she in the north and he in the south, by choosing to represent their respective places with the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.  This helps us to conceptualize the miles that separate them.  Even though they are apart she proclaims that they are still “Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone/I here, thou there, but both but one” (ll. 25-26).  Bradstreet’s love poems are full of poetic devices including symbolism, imagery, and similes.  When Anne needs a break from the complexity of her writing she might enjoy listening to “Love Story” by The Cure.  The song summarizes in a modern and simple way the theme of her poem, that love is ignorant to the distance between them.  The cure sings, “Whenever I'm alone with you/You make me feel like I am whole again” which is similar to what Anne expresses when she writes, “If two be one, as surely thou and I” (l. 3).  Both emphasize the feeling of being united by love as if they are no longer separate people but one person.  The Cure also sings, “However far away/I will always love you”, which is something that Anne can relate to.  Despite the distance between them, Anne still feels a connection with her husband and expresses this sentiment in her poem, “To my Dear and Loving Husband” when she writes, “My love is such that rivers cannot quench” (l. 7)

Another song she may enjoy listening to is “The First Time I Saw Your Face”, preformed by Roberta Flack.  The song is not specifically about a long distance relationship but it does express similar feeling about love.  In the song, Roberta sings “And I knew our joy would fill the earth /And last till the end of time my love” which impresses upon the listener how intense her feelings are.  She is comparing the joy of their relationship to that of the entire expanse of the earth and since time is infinite, their love will last forever.  Anne is essentially saying the same thing in her poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, when she writes, “That when we live no more, we live forever” (l. 12).  Like the song, Anne also has faith that their love will continue even when she and her husband are dead.  Anne’s poem is full of metaphors including when she writes, “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold” (l. 5).  She is saying that her husband’s love is a prize and that she values his love even more than gold.  I think Anne would appreciate the metaphors used in the song “The First Time I Saw Your Face”.  Roberta sings, “And the moon and stars were the gifts you gave/To the dark and the empty skies”.  Similar to what Anne writes when she calls love a prize, the song refers to love as a gift.  Just like the moon and stars were gifts given to light up the dark sky, the love Roberta sings about is a gift given to light up her “dark and empty” life.  

The ability to love and the need to be loved is intrinsic to human nature.  This is a universal concept that exists outside the boundaries of time.  Anne Bradstreet lived a puritan life in the 1600’s while Edgar Allen Poe lived a more secular life in the 1800’s yet they could still relate to the music of the current century just as easily as we can relate to their poetry.  Sarah Costello-Fedje related to this absence of time when she wrote that she “felt very connected to the poem, A Letter to her Husband by Ann Bradstreet. I can understand her pain in missing her husband…” (Costello-Fedje, “Week 4”).  Love is timeless and spans the centuries.