HAVING told me stories, my friend Annabel Lee demanded that I should write a bit of verse to read to her.
My verse is rather rotten verse, and I told her so. She replied that the fact of its being rotten had but little to do with the matter, that most verse was rotten, anyway, and usually the more rotten the better it suited the reader.
She was in that mood.
So I wrote some lines and read them to her—there was nothing else to do. She had been kind in telling me stories, though probably she told them because it amused her. When I finished reading, she said that the verse was not rotten at all. She, for her part, would call it not yet quite ripe.
"That's the verse," said my friend Annabel Lee. "As for the meaning of the words in it, that betrays many things. The most vivid thing it betrays is your age. It shows that you have passed over the period of nineteen and have arrived at exactly one-and-twenty. And therefore it is a triumphant bit of verse.
"Don't you know," said my friend Annabel Lee, "how much verse there is thrown upon the world that means nothing whatsoever? And so when one does happen upon a bit of it that tells even the smallest thing, like the height of the writer, or the color of his hair, then one feels repaid.
"And your verse tells still other things," said my friend Annabel Lee. "One is that you still think, as we've agreed once before, of that which will one day open wondrously for you."
"I did not agree to that, you know," said I.
"Well, then, I agreed to it for both of us," said my friend Annabel Lee. "And your verse betrays that so plainly that one is led to feel that there are persons who grow more hopeful with each bit of darkness that comes to them. If your life were all fire and sunshine you would write very different verse. And if it told anything at all it would tell that while you looked forward to still more fire and sunshine, you would somehow know you were not really to have any more, but that it would grow less and less in the years, and by the time you were an old lady, and still not nearly ready to die, it would give out entirely."
"That would be by the law of compensation," said I. "And it would require a great deal of fire and sunshine in her early life to compensate any one who had grown into an old lady and had run out of it."
"So it would," said my friend Annabel Lee. "Now, when you grow old—though you will never be that which is called an old lady—you will be quite mellow. And probably the less you have to be mellow over, the mellower you will be."
"I don't wish to be that way," said I. "I think that kind of person is pitiful, living year after year."
"You'll not be pitiful," said my friend Annabel Lee. "You can not be mellow and pitiful at the same time. It may be that to be mellow is the best thing, and the most comfortable. It maybe that people struggle through a long life with but one object in their minds—to be mellow in their old age. This verse certainly sounds as if you were looking forward to it."
"I can't see that it sounds that way, at all," said I.
"Of course you can't," said my friend Annabel Lee. "You wrote the verse, and you are but you."
"And what are some of the other things that it betrays?" I inquired.
"It betrays," said my friend Annabel Lee, "that you are better in detail than you are in the entire. And if that is true of you in one thing it is true of you in everything. I daresay your friends find things in you that they like extremely, but you in the entire they look upon as something that has much to acquire."
"Not my friends?" said I.
"Yes, your friends," said my friend Annabel Lee.
"That is a bitter thing for a verse to show," I made answer, "and a bitter thing to have in my mind."
"Well, and aren't you wise enough to prefer the bitter things to the sweet things?" said my friend Annabel Lee. "For every sweet thing that you have in your mind, it is yours to pay a mighty bitter price. Whereas the bitter things are valuable possessions. And if it is true about your friends, of course you wish to know it."
"No," said I, "I don't wish to know it."
"But, at least," said my friend Annabel Lee, with a wonderful softening of her voice into something that was sincere and enchanting, "believe what I told you about it, for in that case you and I have that good gift—a bond of sympathy. For if I had friends, of that kind, they would look upon me as something with much to acquire, very sure. But don't," said my friend Annabel Lee, hastily, "consider the bond of sympathy a sweet thing—remember the mighty bitter price."
"I will believe what you said about the friends," said I—"and it is bitter enough to purge my soul for a time. The bond of sympathy is not a sweet thing, anyway. I don't expect to have to pay for it— And it brings a feeling of restfulness. —"
"A bond of sympathy," said my friend Annabel Lee, "comes already paid for. It does very well. It is not sweet—it tastes more like a cigarette or an olive.
"About the verse"—said my friend Annabel Lee.
"Please let's not talk about that any more," said I.
"Whatever you like," said my friend Annabel Lee.
And we talked of George Sand and her books.
But, anyway, this was my bit of unripe verse: It went lightly
Like the rippling of water;
And many tiny dear things went with it, and I watched them:
I knew that my star would never rise again.
It went softly
Like the half-lights of evening;
And as it went my frantic thoughts pursued it without hoping:
I knew that my star would never rise again.
It went tenderly
Like my friend who loves me;
But since it's gone the way shows dark—my two eyes are tired watching:
I know that my star will never rise again.