I listened to the wailing of its long-winged gulls; snuffed with how broad-nostrilled a gusto that savour not even pinewoods can match, nor any wild flower disguise; and heard at last the sound that stirs beneath all music—­the deep’s loud-falling billow.

I pushed ashore, climbed the sandy bank, and moored my boat to an ash tree at the waterside.  And after scrambling some little distance over dunes yet warm with the sun, I came out at length, and stood like a Greek before the sea.

Here my bright river disembogued in noise and foam.  Far to either side of me stretched the faint gold horns of a bay; and beyond me, almost violet in the shadow of its waves, the shipless sea.

I looked on the breaking water with a divided heart.  Its light, salt airs, its solitary beauty, its illimitable reaches seemed tidings of a region I could remember only as one who, remembering that he has dreamed, remembers nothing more.  Larks rose, singing, behind me.  In a calm, golden light my eager river quarrelled with its peace.  Here indeed was solitude!

It was in searching sea and cliff for the least sign of life that I thought I descried on the furthest extremity of the nearer of the horns of the bay the spires and smouldering domes of a little city.  If I gazed intently, they seemed to vanish away, yet still to shine above the azure if, raising my eyes, I looked again.

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.