The first lines,” said I, “are well-fitting. For you are like to the moon and stars, and they are like to you. You are with them in the shadow-way. And if you were out by the sea in a gray stone sepulcher I should stay there near you, in the night-tide and the day-tide. You would be there--and my heart would set in your direction still.” “More than it had set before,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “For everything escheats to the sea at last. Those persons,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “who have measures of sorrow which can be joined with the sea are the most fortunate persons of all. Those measures of sorrow will serve them well and will stand them in good stead on days when all other things desert them. If a measure of sorrow is joined with the sea it belongs to the sea--and the sea is always there. “The sea,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is like a letter from some one whom you have written to after a long silence, who you thought might be dead. “The sea is the measure of sorrow, and the measure of sorrow is the sea. Having once had a measure of sorrow joined with the sea, your measure of sorrow will never be separated from the sea. “The measure of sorrow will sink all of its woe deep into the sea, and the sea will be of the same color with it. For a measure of sorrow is sufficient to color a great sea. “The sea will give to the measure of sorrow a bit of wild joy. There is no joy in the world like that of the sea--for there is enough in it to come out and touch all things in life, and life itself. And the wild joy will stop short only of a scene of death. If a life is joined with the sea, in spite of all the weariness, all the anguish, all the heavy-days of unrest, and all the futile struggling and wasting of nerves, there will yet be a wild joy in it all, and thrill after thrill of triumph in extreme moments. “Those measures of sorrow that are not joined with the sea must do for themselves. “And for these reasons, those persons who have measures of sorrow that can be joined with the sea are the most fortunate persons of all.” XVII A LUTE WITH NO STRINGS The most astonishing thing about my friend Annabel Lee is that, young as she is, she seems except for some thing in the past to be absolutely in the present. She does not build up for herself things in the future. The future is a thing she looks upon with contempt. She has not a use for it--except perhaps to help form a bitter sentence of words. The present she finds before her, and she lifts it up and places it upon a table before her and opens it as if it were a book--a book with but two pages. She seems to find symbols and figures and faint suggestions upon these two pages from which she derives a multitude of ideas and fancies and material to make bitter sentences of words. It seems to interest her, and it interests me to rare degrees. She dwells upon the present.