“How brilliantly does the emerald sea flash in the sunshine before the eyes of the half-conscious soul!—but burns it with mad-fire.
“How melting-sweet is the perfume of the blue anemone to the sense of the half-conscious soul!—but burns it with mad-fire.
“How beautiful are the bronze lights in the eyes of its friend to the half-conscious soul!—that burn it with mad-fire.
“How joyous is the half-conscious soul at the sounds of singing voices on water!—that burn it with mad-fire.
“How surely come the wild, sweet meanings of the outer air into the depths of the half-conscious soul!—but burn it with mad-fire.
“How madly happy is the half-conscious soul in still hours at sight of a solitary pine-tree upon the mountain-top!—that burns it with mad-fire.
“How tenderly comes Truth to the half-conscious soul in the dead watches of the night!—but burns it with mad-fire.
“Life is vivid, alert, telling to the half-conscious soul,” said Annabel Lee.
“You,” said Annabel Lee, “with your half-conscious soul, when you sit where the gray waves wash the sea-wall at high-tide, when you sit listening with your head bent and your hands dead cold, you think you realize your life—you think you know its hardness—you think you have measured the cruelty they will give you; but you do not know. You know but half—you weep for the other half, though it be horror.
“Still, though you are but half-conscious, though you weep for the other half, when you sit listening with your head bent and your hands dead cold, where the gray waves wash the sea-wall at high-tide—yet you know some of each one of the things that are around you.