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:
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.
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.
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.
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.
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.
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.