Apothescary Scents - Annabel Lee Perfume Oil

As a fragrance blogger with the curiosity of a cat, I’m always searching for the new and unusual.  I stumbled across this brand while shopping for completely unrelated items.  “What is this?!”  A fragrance brand I had not yet heard of with fragrances that spoke to my love of Poe and other literary greats?  I browsed through the offerings and selected two to try in order to satiate my curiosity and perhaps discover a new love.  Annabel Lee is the first of the two I will be reviewing.

Being familiar with, and loving, Annabel Lee by Poe (copied below), I had a preconceived idea about this fragrance before I tested it.  I wanted and expected it to transport me into the poem itself.  Spoilers – Annabel Lee did not disappoint.

This fragrance opens with an air of mystery.  There is a mossy green base blurred with a rolling fog of salt air and driftwood.  You get an immediate sense of place.  You are standing at the shoreline with the waves crashing down consumed with both your love and longing.  There is a sense of beauty wrapped with sadness as the florals of lily and rose touch you like a memory.  The sense of poignancy is perfectly captured in the scent that cradles you. 

Annabel Lee wears on me for roughly 6 hours with light projection.

Notes:  Green base like soft mosses of the shore and heart notes of fresh ocean air and driftwood. Hints of funerary flowers including lily and rose dance like ghosts at the edges of this blend.”

Perfumer: Beth Brown

CRUELTY FREE

VEGAN

This perfume contains pure essential oils and botanically-derived fragrance oils in a carrier of organic rice bran oil.

Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

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.