Having said this, Annabel Lee gazed placidly over my head at the sea.
When her mood is thus tranquil, she talks graciously and evenly and positively, and is beautiful to look at.
My mind was now in much confusion upon the subject in question. But I felt that I must know all that Annabel Lee thought about it.
“What would you say, Annabel Lee,” said I, “to a case like this: If a soul were at variance with everything that touches it, everything that makes life, so that it must struggle through the long nights and long days with bitterness, is not that because the soul has no sense of proportion, and has not made itself properly relative to each and everything that is?—relative, so that when one hard thing touches it, simultaneously one soft thing will touch it; or when it mourns for dead days, simultaneously it rejoices for live ones; or when its best-loved gives it a deep wound, simultaneously its best enemy gives it vivid pleasure.”
“Nothing is relative,” again said Annabel Lee. “Nothing can be relative. Nothing need be relative. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling days and nights, that is a matter relating peculiarly to the soul, and to nothing else, nothing else. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling, the more fool it. It is struggling because of things that would never, never struggle because of it. In truth, not one of them would move itself one millionth of an inch because of so paltry a thing as a soul.”
I looked at Annabel Lee, her hair, her hands and her eyes. As I looked, I was reminded of the word “eternity.”
A human being is a quite wonderful thing, truly—and great—there’s none greater.
Annabel Lee is a person who always says truth, for, for her, there is nothing else to say.
She has reached that marvelous point where a human being expects nothing.