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Annabel Lee Speaks From The Sepulchre
by Katherine Lansing Davis

It's been many and many an age gone by
 in that kingdom by the sea
where I lived with a man who claimed my soul,
 that strong man they called Edgar Lee
And this man he lived
 with no other thought
than to utterly dominate me

I was a child and he was a child
 in that kingdom by the sea
One night as he slept, I ran out like the tide
 where the winds blew bitterly
They chilled my thin body,
 but not my soul,
though the sands washed over me

And now I lie in a long white tomb,
 a sepulchre stony and gray
There he lies and cries as Moon skirts the skies
 in her white and sorrowful way
He dreams me alive, and with flesh on my bones
 craving me warm once more
But my flesh is consumed with maggots and worms
 and I long to be back on the shore

If ever you loved me, as you claim you did so,
 then lift up this corpse of decay
And wrapped in a shroud of silvery cloud
 cast me into the rioting bay
Let the fish find my flesh; clean to alabast bone
 so that from your dark dreams I may go

And when the winds whip, whirling white waves to froth
 go inside to your cold darkened room
Burn candles and myrrh on a silk damask cloth
 In the smoke and the flame,
I'll return, call your name,
My once master, once dear, Edgar Lee

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