Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/18

 lady from this lady, it may be, or perhaps it is the same—and so now this poem and this lady are never far from me.

If indeed Poe did not mean this Annabel Lee when he wrote so enchanting a heart-cry, I at any rate shall always mean this Annabel Lee when Poe's enchanting heart-cry runs in my mind.

Forsooth Poe's Annabel Lee was not so enchanting as this Annabel Lee.

I think this as I gaze up at her graceful little figure standing on my shelf; her wonderful expressive little face; her strange white hands; her hair bound and twisted into glittering black ropes and wound tightly around her head.

Were you to see her you would say that Annabel Lee is only a very pretty little black and terra-cotta and white statue of a Japanese woman. And forthwith you would be greatly mistaken.

It is true that she had stood in ex-