Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/71

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VIII
"Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother!"

"NO," SAID my friend Annabel Lee, "I can't really say that I care for Trowbridge. All that you have said is true enough, but he fails to interest me."

"What do you like in literature?" I asked, regarding her with interest, for I had never heard her say. It must need be something characteristic of herself.

"I like strength, and I like simplicity, and I like emotion, and I like vital things always. And I like poetry rather than prose. Just now," said Annabel Lee, "I am thinking of an old-fashioned bit of verse that to me is all that a poem need be. To have written it is to have done