“The wholly conscious soul holds up before its eyes a mirror and gazes at itself, its color, its texture, its quality, its desires and motives, without flinching, in the strong light of day; the wholly unconscious soul knows not that it is a soul, and never uses a mirror: but the half-conscious soul looks into its glass in the gray light of dusk--it sees its color, its texture, its quality, its desires--but its motives are hidden. Its eyes are wide in the gray light to learn what those, its own motives, are. It can not know, but it can never rest for trying to know. “The wholly conscious soul knows its love, its sorrow, its bitterness, its remorse. “The half-conscious soul knows its love--and wonders why it loves, and wonders if it really can love any but itself, and wonders that it cares for love; the half-conscious soul knows its sorrow--and marvels that it should have sorrow since it can grasp not truth; the half-conscious soul knows its bitterness, and realizes at once its right to and its reason for bitterness--but, thinking of it, the arrow is turned in the wound; the half-conscious soul knows its remorse, but it is convinced that it has no right to remorse, since it does its unworthy acts with infinite forethought. “The wholly conscious soul is a chastened spirit and so has its measure of happiness; the wholly unconscious soul is an unchastened spirit, for it deserves no chastisement--neither has it any happiness, for it knows not whether it is happy or otherwise: but the half-conscious soul is chastised where it is not deserving of it, and goes unchastised where it is richly deserving of it--and so has no happiness, but instead, unhappiness. “Woe to the half-conscious soul,” said Annabel Lee. “How brilliantly does the emerald sea flash in the sunshine before the eyes of the half-conscious soul!--but burns it with mad-fire. “How melting-sweet is the perfume of the blue anemone to the sense of the half-conscious soul!--but burns it with mad-fire. “How beautiful are the bronze lights in the eyes of its friend to the half-conscious soul!--that burn it with mad-fire. “How joyous is the half-conscious soul at the sounds of singing voices on water!--that burn it with mad-fire. “How surely come the wild, sweet meanings of the outer air into the depths of the half-conscious soul!--but burn it with mad-fire. “How madly happy is the half-conscious soul in still hours at sight of a solitary pine-tree upon the mountain-top!--that burns it with mad-fire. “How tenderly comes Truth to the half-conscious soul in the dead watches of the night!--but burns it with mad-fire. “Life is vivid, alert, telling to the half-conscious soul,” said Annabel Lee.