Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/187

 the thin, sweet, meaningless music. You can but sit stupidly staring into the cavity and thinking how joyous will be the music that shall come forth some day, as from time to time your lute is strung with strings—whereas you might better at that moment go out into your garden and fill the cavity with tomatoes and make haste with them to market. And while you sit dreaming over your stringless lute, in your impatience you press upon the stops and press too much and too often, so that when at last your lute is strung the stops will not work right, but will stick fast in one position. And when your other hand touches the strings there will be horrible discord—always horrible discord.

"I have never," said my friend Annabel Lee, "yet seen any one dreaming over an unstrung lute who did not finger the stops."

Having said this, my friend Annabel