What hast done with Martha Goneril the cat?
I would fain you had left her here.
But Mary MacLane—you. Do you know about it?
Your friend Annabel Lee.
[XXV
THE GOLDEN RIPPLE]
MY friend Annabel Lee and I are similar to each other in a few, few ways. Daily we contemplate together a great, blank wall built up of dull, blue stones. It stands before us and we can not get over it, for it is too high; neither can we walk around it, for it is too long; and we can not go through it, for it is solid and very thick. It is directly across the road. We have both come but a short way on the road—so short that we can easily look back over our course to the point where we started. We did not walk together from there, but we have met each other now before the great, blank wall of blue stones.
We have stopped here, for we can not go on.
I wonder and conjecture much about the wall, and my friend Annabel Lee regards it sometimes with interest and sometimes with none.
And, times, we forget all about the wall and merely sit and rest in the shade it casts, or walk back on the road, or in the grass about it, or pluck a few wild sweet berries from the stunted wayside briers.