The first four lines,” said I, “do very well, for it doesn’t matter how long ago you lived—and who can tell? But—I fancy you live with other thoughts than that mentioned.”
“I fancy I do,” said my friend Annabel Lee.
I repeated:
“‘I was a child, and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
And we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee—
A love that the wingèd seraphs in heaven
Coveted her and me.’
The first line might stand,” said I, “for you are only fourteen, and I but one-and-twenty—which is quite young youth when compared to the age of the earth. But the third and fourth lines are appalling. And, alas, you are not my Annabel Lee. Always you make me feel, indeed, that nothing is mine. And no, surely the winged seraphs in heaven do not envy you and me for anything.”
“If they do,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “then heaven must needs be very poorly furnished.”
I repeated:
“‘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 high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.’
I imagine, times,” said I, “that a chill wind has sometime come out of a cloud by night and gone over you. No high-born kinsman comes to carry you away—but I shiver at the possibility. Will a high-born kinsman come to carry you away—shall you be shut into a gray stone sepulcher?”