Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/263

 shine upon it and a few little English sparrows alighting and flying along it and picking at grains. And the grass by the road-side was tall and rank and sweet to the senses, and the road led to farms and the river and the wildwood. Cows were feeding by a shallow brook, and there were sumach bushes, thick and dark, near by.

For several minutes when my eyes rested upon this I felt absolutely content with all of life.

While I'm telling you this, Annabel Lee, I am not quite sure you are listening—and for myself, I see you much more than anything I have talked about. I am wondering how it is possible that you have lived only fourteen years—even the fourteen years of a Japanese woman. And I see again in my mind—your red lips, and your dead-black hair, and your purple eyes, and your wonderful hands,