Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went lightlyLike the rippling of water;And many tiny dear things went with it, and I watched them:I knew that my star would never rise again.Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went softlyLike the half-lights of evening;And as it went my frantic thoughts pursued it without hoping:I knew that my star would never rise again.Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went tenderlyLike my friend who loves me;But since it’s gone the way shows dark—my two eyes are tired watching:I know that my star will never rise again.XXIITHE MESSAGE OF A TENDER SOUL“THE MESSAGE of a tender soul,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is a thing that will go far, oh, so far, and lose nothing of itself.“When all things in the world are counted the beautiful things are in the greatest numbers. And when all the things in the world are counted the message of a tender soul counts greatly more than many.“A tender soul receives back no gratitude for its message, and looks for no gratitude, and does not know what gratitude means. And the tenderness of the message is all unmade and all unknown, but is felt for long, long years.“The message of a tender soul goesover the sea into the lonesomeness of the night and nothing stops it on the way, for all know what it is and bid it godspeed. And it goes down and around a mountain to a house where there is woe, and if before it came that house had turned away charity and love and friendship and good-will and peace, and had sent a curse after them all, still it opens wide its doors for the message of a tender soul. For its coming is not heralded, and the soul that sends it does not even know its tenderness, and the hearts of all in that house where there is woe—they are deeply, unknowingly comforted. And it goes upon the barrenness of a countryside where there is not one green thing growing, and the barrenness is then more than paradise, had paradise no such message. And it goes where lovely flowers grow in thousands, where sparkling water mingles with sparkling water andquenches thirst, where the long gray moss hangs from birch-trees, where pale clouds float—and itself is more beautiful than all these. Have you felt all those tender things that go down into the depths? They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The message of a tender soul—what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message, you do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. There are no sudden salt tears. Only the message is there—only it does that for which it is sent. Have you gone out and done all the work that you could do, and done it faithfully and asked no reward—and have you come back and cried out in bitterness of spirit? Then, it may be, came wondrously beautiful things from over the way to tell you, Take heart. But there was no ‘take heart’ for you. Then it maybe there came from that way which you were not looking, the message of a tender soul. Then there was comfort, and with no tears of pain and no bitter, bitter tears of joy. There was deep comfort so that you could go out and work again and for no reward. There is work that has no reward. For those that work for no reward there can be no comfort in all the vastness except the message of a tender soul. Have you gone out and done all the evil you could do, in cruel ways, and taken away faith in some one from some one—and have come back and suffered more than any of them? Then it may be there came the message of a tender soul—and many, many other things faded from your heart. And still there were no tears. And if there is too much for you in living, and if the countless things near and far in the world crowd over you and fill you with horriblefear, then, if the message of a tender soul comes, one by one they step backward, and in your heart is comfort for the long, long years.“There have been those that have had happiness that was more than the world, but in the end there was no comfort, for their happiness brought with it tears of joy and emotion that had limitless source.“If you have wanted happiness and have hungered and thirsted, after there came the message of a tender soul, you were content with a branch from a green pine-tree.“If you have felt a thousand tender things and have drunk from a thousand cups and then have been about to write it in black lettering that all,allhave failed you—if then there came the message of a tender soul, you have written instead that nothing has failed you, and you haveturned back your footsteps and have tried it all again.“If for you and me to-day there should come over frozen hills and green meadows from a far country the message of a tender soul, should we shiver when it is dark and should we dread the coming of the years, and should we consider what would bring weariness and what would bring rest, and should we measure and contemplate? But no. For the message of a tender soul is a message from one that has found the quiet and is absolutely at peace, and has gone so far toward the stars and so far and wide over the green earth that she has indeed reached the truth, and her soul gives of its tenderness without thinking, and without knowing, and all in the dark.“And when we should feel the message, all without knowing, there would come again that long-since faith, and that fullnessof life, and that sense of realness, and the shining of the sun would be of new meaning.“It may be,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “that we will have to go still farther into the wilderness before the message comes, and it may be also that it will not come for many years.“But it is in all ways comforting to know there is such a thing.”More than I considered the message that might come, I considered the voice with no hardness but with softness, and the lily face of my friend Annabel Lee.XXIIIME TO MY FRIEND ANNABEL LEEIWROTE the day before yesterday this letter to my friend Annabel Lee:Montreal. ——Dear Fair Lady:Since I have come to stay in Montreal for a time, and you still in Boston, I have seen you, times, even more vividly than when I was there. You come into my dreams at dead of night.Can you imagine what you are in my dreams?I look forward impatiently to the end of my time here, so that I may go to find you again;—but my impatience grows someway less when I think that if I am with you this vision may vanish from mydreams.——I will write you of some of the things I have found here.There is much in Montreal that takes me back into the dim mists—the wonderful days when I had lived only three years. It was not here, but farther west—still what is in Canada is Canadian and does not change nor vary. This Canadian land and water and air awakens shadow-things in my memory and visions and voices of the world as it was when I was three.It is all exceeding fair to look upon about here. The fields are green, not as they are in Massachusetts, but as they might be in the south of France. There is a beautiful, broad, blue river that can be seen from far off, and it sends out a haze and then all is gray French country, and gray French villages. When you come near you see the French peasants working in the fields—old men and maidens,and very old, strange-looking women, all with no English words in their mouths and no English thing in their lives if they can avoid it. They wear brass rings on their hands and in their ears, and the women wear gay-colored fish-wife petticoats, and in all their faces and eyes is that look that comes from working always among vegetables in the sun, the look of a piteous, useless brain.And there is the strange, long, tree-covered hill that they call Mount Royal. I have in my mind a picture of it in a bygone century, when an adventurous, brave Frenchman and a few Indians of the wild stood high at its summit—he with the French flag unfurled in the wind, and the Indians shading their eyes and looking off and down into the valley. And there was not one sign of human life in the valley, and all was wild growth and tangled underbrush, and death-like silence, exceptmaybe for the far-off sound of flying wild hoofs in the forest. And now this hill is the lodging-place of many things hidden among the trees—convents set about with tall, thick, solid stone walls, and inside the walls are heavy-swathed nuns who have said their farewell to all things without. And there are hospitals founded and endowed in the name of the Virgin, and Jesuit colleges, and the lodges of priests and brotherhoods.And in the midst of the St. Lawrence valley where the Indians looked down is this old gray-stone city, and in thePlace d’Armessquare is a fine triumphant statue ofMaisonneuvewith his French flag.This gray-stone city is builded thick with gray-stone cathedrals, and some of them are very fine, and some of them are parti-colored as rainbows inside, and all of them are Roman Catholic and French.The Protestant churches are but churches.And theNotre Damecathedral, when the setting sun touches its great, tall, gray, twin towers with red, is even more than French and Roman Catholic. The white-faced women in the nunnery at the side of it must need have a likeness of those eternal towers graven on their narrow devout hearts. Within, theNotre Dameis most gorgeous with brilliant-colored saints and Virgins and a passion of wealth and Romanism.And is it not wonderful to think that many of these gray-stone buildings and dwellings were here in the sixteen hundreds, and that gray nuns walked in these same green gardens two centuries ago? And the same country was about here, and the same blue water.And when all is said, the country and the blue water have been here always,and are the most wonderful things of all. If the gray-stone buildings were of yellow gold and of emeralds and brilliants, the green country would be no fairer and no less exquisitely fair, and the blue of the water would go no deeper into the heart and no less deep, and the pale clouds would float high and gently with the same old-time mystery. And the centuries they know are countless.The natural things are the same in Massachusetts—but here they seem someway even older. You feel the breath of the very long-ago among the wildness of green—as if only human beings had come and gone, but it had never changed its smallest twig or grass-blade. It seems but waiting, and its patience in the waiting is without end.Away on the other side of the tree-covered mountain I have seen a flat, gently-curved, country road with the sunshineupon 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 seeyoumuch 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,and your forehead with the widow’s peak, and the two short side-locks that curve around, and your slimness in the scarlet and gold-embroidered gown.And most of all I see your eyes when they are full of soft purple shadows, and your lips when they are tender—and your heart, as I have seen it before, and its depths which are of the white purity.Last night there was the vision of you with your purple eyes wide and gazing down at me with the white lids still. And I was horror-struck at the look of world-weariness in them—how that it is terrible, how that it follows one into the darkness and light, how that it is grief and rage and madness, how that it makes the heart ache until all the life-nerves ache with it—and there is no end; how that it is life and death, and one can not escape!—a world of tears and entreating and vows; but no, there is no escape.And then again I looked up at your purple eyes gazing down at me full of strong, high scorn and triumph. “Do you think we have not conquered life?” they said. “Do you think we can not crush out all the little demons that presume to torture? Do you think we can not conquereverything? Who is there that we have not known? Where is there that we have not been? Are there any still, still shadows that we have cringed before? Are there any brilliant lights upon the sky that we have not faced boldly and put aside? And the stones and the stars and the mists on the sea are less—less than we,—weare the greatest things of all.”Thus your two eyes when I slept, and when I woke I saw you again as you have looked so many times—the expression of your red lips, and your voice with vague bitterness, and your lily face inscrutable.I shall see you so again many times, my friend AnnabelLee.—The fact remains that I am in Montreal and Canada. And as the days run along I am reminded that I have in me the old Canadian instincts. The word “Canadian” has always called up in my mind a confused throng of things, like—porridge for tea, and Sir Hugh MacDonald, and Dominion Day, and my aunt Elizabeth MacLane, and old-fashioned pictures of her majesty the queen, and Orangemen’s Day, and “good-night” for good-evening, and “reel of cotton” for spool of thread, and “tin” instead of can, and Canadian cheese, andrawsberriesin a patent pail, and the Queen’s Own in Toronto, and soldiers in red coats, and children in Scotch kilts, and jam-tarts, and barley-sugar, and whitefish from Lake Winnipeg, and the C. P. R., and the Parliament at Ottawa, and coasting in toboggans,and Lord Aberdeen, and everything-coming-over-from-England-so-much-better-and-cheaper-than-American-ware,—and all that sort of thing. And my mind has always had a color for Canada—a shade of mingled deep green and golden brown.Even in Montreal, where so much is French, there is enough to stamp it as beyond question Canadian. One still sees marks of her majesty the queen—but shop-keepers assert confidently that “Edward is going to make a good king,” and Canadian men are made up as nearly as possible after his pattern, stout and with that short pointed beard.In the greenness of Dominion Square is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have seen. All the statues that stand about in Montreal are finer than most of their kind, and there are no such hideous creations as are set up in Boston andNew York. The Dominion Square statue is a bronze figure of a Sir John A. MacDonald. The face of the figure is all that is serene and benign, and the lines of the body and of the hands are made with strength and beauty. Whether it is like Sir John A. MacDonald, one does not know—’tis enough that it’s an exquisite piece of workmanship with which to adorn a city. And theMaisonneuvestatue is a fine, handsome thing, and is altogether alive. The bronze is no bronze, but has seventeenth-century red blood in its veins, and the arm that is held high and the hand with the flag mean conquest and victory.I shall see Quebec and the length of the blue river before I see you again, and they, like Montreal, will be mingled with a many-tinted looking-forward to being with you again.High upon the tower of a gray-stonebuilding that I see from my window is a carved gorgon’s head, a likeness of Medusa with snaky locks. She is hundreds of feet above me as I sit here, but I see the expression of her face plainly—it is desolate and discouraging. It says, Do you think you will see that fair lily Annabel Lee again? Well, then, how foolish are you in your day and generation! I in my years have seen the passing of many fair lilies. Always theypass.—Tell me, Annabel Lee,—always do they pass? But no—I shall find you again. You will make all things many-tinted for a thousand thousands of gold days. And are we not good friends in way and manner? And do we not go the foot-pathway together?But I wonder always why the gorgon seems so fearfullyknowing.—Always my love to you.Mary MacLane.XXIVMY FRIEND ANNABEL LEE TO MEAND after some days my friend Annabel Lee wrote me this upon a square of rice paper:Boston,—Monday.Dear Mary MacLane:—Don’t you know a gorgon is the knowingest thing in the land?You may believe what your friend says of fair lilies.But have I ever said that I am a fair lily?As for my eyes—they are good chiefly to see with. And they are bad for many things.Yes—get thee home soon, child.I miss you when I come to deck memornings with my lavender slip and my scarlet frock. And the gold marguerites have not been brushed since you went away.Naught have I to bear me company except Ellen, the faithful little tan deer—and she can not wait upon me, and she cannot worship me.What hast done with Martha Goneril the cat?I would fain you had left her here.But Mary MacLane—you. Do you know about it?Your friend Annabel Lee.XXVTHE GOLDEN RIPPLEMY friend Annabel Lee and I are similar to each other in a few, few ways. Daily we contemplate together a great, blank wall built up of dull, blue stones. It stands before us and we can not get over it, for it is too high; neither can we walk around it, for it is too long; and we can not go through it, for it is solid and very thick. It is directly across the road. We have both come but a short way on the road—so short that we can easily look back over our course to the point where we started. We did not walk together from there, but we have met each other now before the great, blank wall of blue stones.We have stopped here, for we can not go on.I wonder and conjecture much about the wall, and my friend Annabel Lee regards it sometimes with interest and sometimes with none.And, times, we forget all about the wall and merely sit and rest in the shade it casts, or walk back on the road, or in the grass about it, or pluck a few wild sweet berries from the stunted wayside briers.And, too, when a thunder storm comes up and the air is full of wind and rain slanting and whistling about us, we crouch close against the base of the wall, and we do not become so wet as we should were there no wall.But that is only when the wind is from beyond it.When the wind with its flood of rain comes toward us as we crouch by the wallwe are beaten and drenched and buffeted and driven hard against that cold, blue surface. And the ragged edges of the rocks make bruises on our foreheads.Some days we become exceeding weary with looking at the great blank wall—and with having looked at it already for many a day, and many a day.“It is so high and so thick,” I say.“It is so long,” says my friend Annabel Lee.To all appearances we have gone as far upon the road as we ever can go. We can not get over the wall of blue stones—and we can not walk round—and we can not go through. There is nothing to indicate that it will ever be removed.The field for conjecture as to what lies on the other side of the road is so vast that we do not venture to conjecture.But we have talked often and madly of the wall itself.“Perhaps,” I say, “it is that the wall is placed here before our eyes to hide from us our limitations.”“Perhaps,” says my friend Annabel Lee, “it is that the wall itself is our limitations.”Which, if it is true, is very damnable.For though human beings have done some divine things they have never gone beyond their limitations.The blue of the stones in the wall is not a dark blue, but it is very cold. It is the color that is called stone blue.It never changes.The sun and the shade look alike upon it; and the wet rain does not brighten it; neither do thick clouds of dust make it dull.It is stone blue.Except for this:Once in a number of days, in fair weather or foul, there will come upon the wide blankness a rippling like gold.It lingers a second and vanishes—and appears again. And then it’s gone until another time.How tender, how lovely, how bright is the golden ripple against the cold, cold blue!It is come and gone in a minute.We do not know its coming or its going.But while we see it our hearts beat high and fast.“It may be,” I say when it is gone, “that this golden ripple will show us some way to get beyond the wall where things are divine.”“It may be,” says my friend Annabel Lee, “that the golden ripple will show us something divine among these few things on this side of the wall.”My friend, Annabel Lee—with your strong, brave little heart and your two strong little hands, you were with me in my weary, bitter day. You were brave enough for two. It is to you from me that a message will go from out of silences and over frozen hills in the years that are coming.THE END
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went lightlyLike the rippling of water;And many tiny dear things went with it, and I watched them:I knew that my star would never rise again.Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went softlyLike the half-lights of evening;And as it went my frantic thoughts pursued it without hoping:I knew that my star would never rise again.Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went tenderlyLike my friend who loves me;But since it’s gone the way shows dark—my two eyes are tired watching:I know that my star will never rise again.
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went lightlyLike the rippling of water;And many tiny dear things went with it, and I watched them:I knew that my star would never rise again.Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went softlyLike the half-lights of evening;And as it went my frantic thoughts pursued it without hoping:I knew that my star would never rise again.Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went tenderlyLike my friend who loves me;But since it’s gone the way shows dark—my two eyes are tired watching:I know that my star will never rise again.
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went lightlyLike the rippling of water;And many tiny dear things went with it, and I watched them:I knew that my star would never rise again.
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went softlyLike the half-lights of evening;And as it went my frantic thoughts pursued it without hoping:I knew that my star would never rise again.
Yesterday my star went down in the deep shadows.It went tenderlyLike my friend who loves me;But since it’s gone the way shows dark—my two eyes are tired watching:I know that my star will never rise again.
“THE MESSAGE of a tender soul,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is a thing that will go far, oh, so far, and lose nothing of itself.
“When all things in the world are counted the beautiful things are in the greatest numbers. And when all the things in the world are counted the message of a tender soul counts greatly more than many.
“A tender soul receives back no gratitude for its message, and looks for no gratitude, and does not know what gratitude means. And the tenderness of the message is all unmade and all unknown, but is felt for long, long years.
“The message of a tender soul goesover the sea into the lonesomeness of the night and nothing stops it on the way, for all know what it is and bid it godspeed. And it goes down and around a mountain to a house where there is woe, and if before it came that house had turned away charity and love and friendship and good-will and peace, and had sent a curse after them all, still it opens wide its doors for the message of a tender soul. For its coming is not heralded, and the soul that sends it does not even know its tenderness, and the hearts of all in that house where there is woe—they are deeply, unknowingly comforted. And it goes upon the barrenness of a countryside where there is not one green thing growing, and the barrenness is then more than paradise, had paradise no such message. And it goes where lovely flowers grow in thousands, where sparkling water mingles with sparkling water andquenches thirst, where the long gray moss hangs from birch-trees, where pale clouds float—and itself is more beautiful than all these. Have you felt all those tender things that go down into the depths? They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The message of a tender soul—what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message, you do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. There are no sudden salt tears. Only the message is there—only it does that for which it is sent. Have you gone out and done all the work that you could do, and done it faithfully and asked no reward—and have you come back and cried out in bitterness of spirit? Then, it may be, came wondrously beautiful things from over the way to tell you, Take heart. But there was no ‘take heart’ for you. Then it maybe there came from that way which you were not looking, the message of a tender soul. Then there was comfort, and with no tears of pain and no bitter, bitter tears of joy. There was deep comfort so that you could go out and work again and for no reward. There is work that has no reward. For those that work for no reward there can be no comfort in all the vastness except the message of a tender soul. Have you gone out and done all the evil you could do, in cruel ways, and taken away faith in some one from some one—and have come back and suffered more than any of them? Then it may be there came the message of a tender soul—and many, many other things faded from your heart. And still there were no tears. And if there is too much for you in living, and if the countless things near and far in the world crowd over you and fill you with horriblefear, then, if the message of a tender soul comes, one by one they step backward, and in your heart is comfort for the long, long years.
“There have been those that have had happiness that was more than the world, but in the end there was no comfort, for their happiness brought with it tears of joy and emotion that had limitless source.
“If you have wanted happiness and have hungered and thirsted, after there came the message of a tender soul, you were content with a branch from a green pine-tree.
“If you have felt a thousand tender things and have drunk from a thousand cups and then have been about to write it in black lettering that all,allhave failed you—if then there came the message of a tender soul, you have written instead that nothing has failed you, and you haveturned back your footsteps and have tried it all again.
“If for you and me to-day there should come over frozen hills and green meadows from a far country the message of a tender soul, should we shiver when it is dark and should we dread the coming of the years, and should we consider what would bring weariness and what would bring rest, and should we measure and contemplate? But no. For the message of a tender soul is a message from one that has found the quiet and is absolutely at peace, and has gone so far toward the stars and so far and wide over the green earth that she has indeed reached the truth, and her soul gives of its tenderness without thinking, and without knowing, and all in the dark.
“And when we should feel the message, all without knowing, there would come again that long-since faith, and that fullnessof life, and that sense of realness, and the shining of the sun would be of new meaning.
“It may be,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “that we will have to go still farther into the wilderness before the message comes, and it may be also that it will not come for many years.
“But it is in all ways comforting to know there is such a thing.”
More than I considered the message that might come, I considered the voice with no hardness but with softness, and the lily face of my friend Annabel Lee.
IWROTE the day before yesterday this letter to my friend Annabel Lee:
Montreal. ——
Dear Fair Lady:
Since I have come to stay in Montreal for a time, and you still in Boston, I have seen you, times, even more vividly than when I was there. You come into my dreams at dead of night.
Can you imagine what you are in my dreams?
I look forward impatiently to the end of my time here, so that I may go to find you again;—but my impatience grows someway less when I think that if I am with you this vision may vanish from mydreams.——
I will write you of some of the things I have found here.
There is much in Montreal that takes me back into the dim mists—the wonderful days when I had lived only three years. It was not here, but farther west—still what is in Canada is Canadian and does not change nor vary. This Canadian land and water and air awakens shadow-things in my memory and visions and voices of the world as it was when I was three.
It is all exceeding fair to look upon about here. The fields are green, not as they are in Massachusetts, but as they might be in the south of France. There is a beautiful, broad, blue river that can be seen from far off, and it sends out a haze and then all is gray French country, and gray French villages. When you come near you see the French peasants working in the fields—old men and maidens,and very old, strange-looking women, all with no English words in their mouths and no English thing in their lives if they can avoid it. They wear brass rings on their hands and in their ears, and the women wear gay-colored fish-wife petticoats, and in all their faces and eyes is that look that comes from working always among vegetables in the sun, the look of a piteous, useless brain.
And there is the strange, long, tree-covered hill that they call Mount Royal. I have in my mind a picture of it in a bygone century, when an adventurous, brave Frenchman and a few Indians of the wild stood high at its summit—he with the French flag unfurled in the wind, and the Indians shading their eyes and looking off and down into the valley. And there was not one sign of human life in the valley, and all was wild growth and tangled underbrush, and death-like silence, exceptmaybe for the far-off sound of flying wild hoofs in the forest. And now this hill is the lodging-place of many things hidden among the trees—convents set about with tall, thick, solid stone walls, and inside the walls are heavy-swathed nuns who have said their farewell to all things without. And there are hospitals founded and endowed in the name of the Virgin, and Jesuit colleges, and the lodges of priests and brotherhoods.
And in the midst of the St. Lawrence valley where the Indians looked down is this old gray-stone city, and in thePlace d’Armessquare is a fine triumphant statue ofMaisonneuvewith his French flag.
This gray-stone city is builded thick with gray-stone cathedrals, and some of them are very fine, and some of them are parti-colored as rainbows inside, and all of them are Roman Catholic and French.
The Protestant churches are but churches.
And theNotre Damecathedral, when the setting sun touches its great, tall, gray, twin towers with red, is even more than French and Roman Catholic. The white-faced women in the nunnery at the side of it must need have a likeness of those eternal towers graven on their narrow devout hearts. Within, theNotre Dameis most gorgeous with brilliant-colored saints and Virgins and a passion of wealth and Romanism.
And is it not wonderful to think that many of these gray-stone buildings and dwellings were here in the sixteen hundreds, and that gray nuns walked in these same green gardens two centuries ago? And the same country was about here, and the same blue water.
And when all is said, the country and the blue water have been here always,and are the most wonderful things of all. If the gray-stone buildings were of yellow gold and of emeralds and brilliants, the green country would be no fairer and no less exquisitely fair, and the blue of the water would go no deeper into the heart and no less deep, and the pale clouds would float high and gently with the same old-time mystery. And the centuries they know are countless.
The natural things are the same in Massachusetts—but here they seem someway even older. You feel the breath of the very long-ago among the wildness of green—as if only human beings had come and gone, but it had never changed its smallest twig or grass-blade. It seems but waiting, and its patience in the waiting is without end.
Away on the other side of the tree-covered mountain I have seen a flat, gently-curved, country road with the sunshineupon 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 seeyoumuch 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,and your forehead with the widow’s peak, and the two short side-locks that curve around, and your slimness in the scarlet and gold-embroidered gown.
And most of all I see your eyes when they are full of soft purple shadows, and your lips when they are tender—and your heart, as I have seen it before, and its depths which are of the white purity.
Last night there was the vision of you with your purple eyes wide and gazing down at me with the white lids still. And I was horror-struck at the look of world-weariness in them—how that it is terrible, how that it follows one into the darkness and light, how that it is grief and rage and madness, how that it makes the heart ache until all the life-nerves ache with it—and there is no end; how that it is life and death, and one can not escape!—a world of tears and entreating and vows; but no, there is no escape.
And then again I looked up at your purple eyes gazing down at me full of strong, high scorn and triumph. “Do you think we have not conquered life?” they said. “Do you think we can not crush out all the little demons that presume to torture? Do you think we can not conquereverything? Who is there that we have not known? Where is there that we have not been? Are there any still, still shadows that we have cringed before? Are there any brilliant lights upon the sky that we have not faced boldly and put aside? And the stones and the stars and the mists on the sea are less—less than we,—weare the greatest things of all.”
Thus your two eyes when I slept, and when I woke I saw you again as you have looked so many times—the expression of your red lips, and your voice with vague bitterness, and your lily face inscrutable.
I shall see you so again many times, my friend AnnabelLee.—
The fact remains that I am in Montreal and Canada. And as the days run along I am reminded that I have in me the old Canadian instincts. The word “Canadian” has always called up in my mind a confused throng of things, like—porridge for tea, and Sir Hugh MacDonald, and Dominion Day, and my aunt Elizabeth MacLane, and old-fashioned pictures of her majesty the queen, and Orangemen’s Day, and “good-night” for good-evening, and “reel of cotton” for spool of thread, and “tin” instead of can, and Canadian cheese, andrawsberriesin a patent pail, and the Queen’s Own in Toronto, and soldiers in red coats, and children in Scotch kilts, and jam-tarts, and barley-sugar, and whitefish from Lake Winnipeg, and the C. P. R., and the Parliament at Ottawa, and coasting in toboggans,and Lord Aberdeen, and everything-coming-over-from-England-so-much-better-and-cheaper-than-American-ware,—and all that sort of thing. And my mind has always had a color for Canada—a shade of mingled deep green and golden brown.
Even in Montreal, where so much is French, there is enough to stamp it as beyond question Canadian. One still sees marks of her majesty the queen—but shop-keepers assert confidently that “Edward is going to make a good king,” and Canadian men are made up as nearly as possible after his pattern, stout and with that short pointed beard.
In the greenness of Dominion Square is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have seen. All the statues that stand about in Montreal are finer than most of their kind, and there are no such hideous creations as are set up in Boston andNew York. The Dominion Square statue is a bronze figure of a Sir John A. MacDonald. The face of the figure is all that is serene and benign, and the lines of the body and of the hands are made with strength and beauty. Whether it is like Sir John A. MacDonald, one does not know—’tis enough that it’s an exquisite piece of workmanship with which to adorn a city. And theMaisonneuvestatue is a fine, handsome thing, and is altogether alive. The bronze is no bronze, but has seventeenth-century red blood in its veins, and the arm that is held high and the hand with the flag mean conquest and victory.
I shall see Quebec and the length of the blue river before I see you again, and they, like Montreal, will be mingled with a many-tinted looking-forward to being with you again.
High upon the tower of a gray-stonebuilding that I see from my window is a carved gorgon’s head, a likeness of Medusa with snaky locks. She is hundreds of feet above me as I sit here, but I see the expression of her face plainly—it is desolate and discouraging. It says, Do you think you will see that fair lily Annabel Lee again? Well, then, how foolish are you in your day and generation! I in my years have seen the passing of many fair lilies. Always theypass.—
Tell me, Annabel Lee,—always do they pass? But no—I shall find you again. You will make all things many-tinted for a thousand thousands of gold days. And are we not good friends in way and manner? And do we not go the foot-pathway together?
But I wonder always why the gorgon seems so fearfullyknowing.—
Always my love to you.
Mary MacLane.
AND after some days my friend Annabel Lee wrote me this upon a square of rice paper:
Boston,—Monday.
Dear Mary MacLane:—Don’t you know a gorgon is the knowingest thing in the land?
You may believe what your friend says of fair lilies.
But have I ever said that I am a fair lily?
As for my eyes—they are good chiefly to see with. And they are bad for many things.
Yes—get thee home soon, child.
I miss you when I come to deck memornings with my lavender slip and my scarlet frock. And the gold marguerites have not been brushed since you went away.
Naught have I to bear me company except Ellen, the faithful little tan deer—and she can not wait upon me, and she cannot worship me.
What hast done with Martha Goneril the cat?
I would fain you had left her here.
But Mary MacLane—you. Do you know about it?
Your friend Annabel Lee.
MY friend Annabel Lee and I are similar to each other in a few, few ways. Daily we contemplate together a great, blank wall built up of dull, blue stones. It stands before us and we can not get over it, for it is too high; neither can we walk around it, for it is too long; and we can not go through it, for it is solid and very thick. It is directly across the road. We have both come but a short way on the road—so short that we can easily look back over our course to the point where we started. We did not walk together from there, but we have met each other now before the great, blank wall of blue stones.
We have stopped here, for we can not go on.
I wonder and conjecture much about the wall, and my friend Annabel Lee regards it sometimes with interest and sometimes with none.
And, times, we forget all about the wall and merely sit and rest in the shade it casts, or walk back on the road, or in the grass about it, or pluck a few wild sweet berries from the stunted wayside briers.
And, too, when a thunder storm comes up and the air is full of wind and rain slanting and whistling about us, we crouch close against the base of the wall, and we do not become so wet as we should were there no wall.
But that is only when the wind is from beyond it.
When the wind with its flood of rain comes toward us as we crouch by the wallwe are beaten and drenched and buffeted and driven hard against that cold, blue surface. And the ragged edges of the rocks make bruises on our foreheads.
Some days we become exceeding weary with looking at the great blank wall—and with having looked at it already for many a day, and many a day.
“It is so high and so thick,” I say.
“It is so long,” says my friend Annabel Lee.
To all appearances we have gone as far upon the road as we ever can go. We can not get over the wall of blue stones—and we can not walk round—and we can not go through. There is nothing to indicate that it will ever be removed.
The field for conjecture as to what lies on the other side of the road is so vast that we do not venture to conjecture.
But we have talked often and madly of the wall itself.
“Perhaps,” I say, “it is that the wall is placed here before our eyes to hide from us our limitations.”
“Perhaps,” says my friend Annabel Lee, “it is that the wall itself is our limitations.”
Which, if it is true, is very damnable.
For though human beings have done some divine things they have never gone beyond their limitations.
The blue of the stones in the wall is not a dark blue, but it is very cold. It is the color that is called stone blue.
It never changes.
The sun and the shade look alike upon it; and the wet rain does not brighten it; neither do thick clouds of dust make it dull.
It is stone blue.
Except for this:
Once in a number of days, in fair weather or foul, there will come upon the wide blankness a rippling like gold.
It lingers a second and vanishes—and appears again. And then it’s gone until another time.
How tender, how lovely, how bright is the golden ripple against the cold, cold blue!
It is come and gone in a minute.
We do not know its coming or its going.
But while we see it our hearts beat high and fast.
“It may be,” I say when it is gone, “that this golden ripple will show us some way to get beyond the wall where things are divine.”
“It may be,” says my friend Annabel Lee, “that the golden ripple will show us something divine among these few things on this side of the wall.”
My friend, Annabel Lee—with your strong, brave little heart and your two strong little hands, you were with me in my weary, bitter day. You were brave enough for two. It is to you from me that a message will go from out of silences and over frozen hills in the years that are coming.
THE END