.

So, caring not how far I must go so long as my path lay beside these
breaking waters, I set out on the firm, white sands to prove this city
the mirage I deemed it.

What wonder, then, my senses fell asleep in that vast lullaby! And out
of a daydream almost as deep as that in which I first set out, I was
suddenly aroused by a light tapping sound, distinct and regular
between the roaring breakers.

I lifted my eyes to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed.
But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spade
among the pebbles had caused the birdlike noise I had heard.

So engrossed was she with her building in the sand that she had not
heard me approaching. She laboured on at the margin of the cliff's
shadow where the sea-birds cried, answering Echo in the rocks. So
solitary and yet so intent, so sedate and yet so eager a little figure
she seemed in the long motionlessness of the shore, by the dark
heedlessness of the sea, I hesitated to disturb her.

Who of all Time's children could this be playing uncompanioned by the
sea? And at a little distance betwixt me and her in the softly-mounded
sand her spade had already scrawled in large, ungainly capitals, the
answer--"Annabel Lee." The little flounced black frock, the tresses of
black hair, the small, beautiful dark face--this then was Annabel Lee;
and that bright, phantom city I had seen--that was the vanishing
mockery of her kingdom.

I called her from where I stood--"Annabel Lee!" She lifted her head
and shook back her hair, and gazed at me startled and intent. I went
nearer.

"You are a very lonely little girl," I said.

"I am building in the sand," she answered.

"A castle?"

She shook her head.

"It was in dreams," she said, flushing darkly.

"What kind of dream was it in then?"

"Oh! I often dream it; and I build it in the sand. But there's never
time: the sea comes back."

"Was the tide quite high when you began?" I asked; for now it was low.

"Just that much from the stones," she said; "I waited for it ever so
long."

"It has a long way to come yet," I said; "you will finish it _this_
time, I dare say."

She shook her head and lifted her spade.

"Oh no; it is much bigger, more than twice. And I haven't the seaweed,
or the shells, and it comes back very, very quickly."

"But where is the little boy you play with down here by the sea?"

She glanced at me swiftly and surely; and shook her head again.

"He would