Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/186

 quickly and give it up readily with no regret. And after she had given away the book, it seems as if she would pick up a flower from somewhere near, and twirl the stem in her thumb and finger, and glance out the window.

Not that she has a contempt for the present as for the future, but that it seems she is not dependent on the book of the two pages for her thought of it.

But also there is method in her contempt for the future. For she deigns to consider that the future becomes the present, as one day follows after another. But she touches it not in good faith until it is indeed the present.

My friend Annabel Lee, times, sits playing upon a little, old lute.

"The future," said my friend Annabel Lee, "is like a lute with no strings. You cannot play upon such a lute and fill the long, long corridors in your brain with