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26.-ANNABEL LEE.

EDGAR ALLAN POE was born in Baltimore, January, 1811. He wrote a large number of poems, tales, essays, and criticisms, and delivered a series of lectures on the universe. His writings display great inventive power; they combine remarkable grace and smoothness with weird and terrible impressiveness, and display in vivid colors the heights and depths of human passion and sentiment. He died October 7, 1849.

1. It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

2. I was a child, and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love,—

I and my Annabel Lee,

With a love that the wingéd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

3. And this was the reason that long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

4. The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me :

Yes, that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

5. But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,—

Of many far wiser than we;

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

6. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side.
Of my darling-my darling, my life, and my bride-
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

27. THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

PHILIP HENRY GOSSE was born at Worcester, England, in 1810. In 1827 he traveled in Canada and the United States, and also visited Jamaica. After his return to England he became interested in microscopical research; and, having gone to the sea-shore for his health, he wrote A Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast. He is the author of The Aquarium: A Manual of Marine Zoology, and of numerous other scientific works. His writings gained him admission to the Royal Society in 1856. He is considered one of the foremost naturalists of the day.

1. A REMARKABLE feature in the Pacific Ocean, and one that distinguishes it from every other sea, is the immense assemblage of small islands with which it is crowded, particularly in the portion situated between the tropics. For about three thousand miles from the coast of South America the sea is almost entirely free from islands, but

thence to the great isles of India an immense belt of ocean, nearly five thousand miles in length and fifteen hundred in breadth, is so studded with them as almost to be one continuous archipelago.

2. The term Polynesia, by which this division of the globe is now distinguished, is compounded of two Greek words signifying many islands. Very few of these gems of the ocean are more than a few miles in extent, though Tahiti and some in the more western groups are of rather larger dimensions; while Hawaii-the largest island in Polynesia-is about the size of Yorkshire.

3. The isles which in such vast numbers thus stud the bosom of the Pacific are of three distinct forms,-the coral, the crystal, and the volcanic. Of these, the first formation greatly predominates, but the largest islands are of the last description; of the crystal formation, but few specimens are known. Imagine a belt of land in the wide ocean not more than half a mile in breadth, but extending in an irregular curve to the length of ten or twenty miles or more, the height above the water not more than a yard or two at most, but clothed with a mass of the richest and most verdant vegetation.

4. Here and there above the general bed of luxuriant foliage rises a grove of cocoanut-trees, waving their feathery plumes high in the air and gracefully bending their tall and slender stems to the breathing of the pleasant tradewind. The grove is bordered by a narrow beach on each side, of the most glittering whiteness, contrasting with the beautiful azure waters by which it is environed.

5. From end to end of the curved isle stretches in a straight line-forming, as it were, the cord of the bow-a narrow beach of the same snowy whiteness, almost level with the sea at the lowest tide, inclosing a semicircular

space of water between it and the island, called the lagoon. Over this line of beach-which occupies the leeward side, the curve being to windward-the sea is breaking with sublime majesty.

6. The long unbroken swell of the ocean, hitherto unbridled through a course of thousands of miles, is met by this rampart, when the huge billows, rearing themselves upward many yards above its level and bending their foaming crests, "form a graceful liquid arch, glittering in the rays of a tropical sun as if studded with brilliants. But before the eyes of the spectator can follow the splendid aqueous gallery which they appear to have reared, with loud and hollow roar they fall in magnificent desolation, and spread the gigantic fabric in froth and spray upon the horizontal and gently-broken surface."

7. Contrasting strongly with the tumult and confusion of the hoary billows without, the water within the lagoon exhibits the serene placidity of a mill-pond. Extending downward to a depth varying from a few feet to fifty fathoms, the waters possess the lively green hue common to soundings on a white or yellow ground, while the surface, unruffled by a wave, reflects with accurate distinctness the mast of the canoe that sleeps upon its bosom, and the tufts of the cocoanut-plumes that rise from the beach above it. Such is a coral island; and if its appearance is one of singular loveliness, as all who have seen it testify, its structure, on examination, is found to be no less interesting and wonderful.

8. The beach of white sand which opposes the whole force of the ocean is found to be the summit of a rock which rises abruptly from an unknown depth like a perpendicular wall. The whole of this rampart, as far as our senses can take cognizance of it, is composed of living coral;

and the same substance forms the foundation of the curved and more elevated side, which is smiling in the luxuriance and beauty of tropical vegetation. The elevation of the coral to the surface is not always abruptly perpendicular : sometimes reefs of varying depths extend to a considerable distance, in the form of successive platforms or terraces.

9. In these regions may be seen islands in every stage of their formation, "some presenting little more than a point or summit of a branching coralline pyramid, at a depth scarcely discernible through the transparent waters; others spreading like submarine gardens or shrubberies beneath the surface, or presenting here and there a little bank of broken coral and sand, over which the rolling wave occasionally breaks;" while others exist in the more. advanced state I have just described, the main bank sufficiently elevated to be permanently protected from the waves and already clothed with verdure, and the lagoon inclosed by the narrow bulwark of the coral reef.

10. Though the rampart thus reared is sufficient to preserve the inner waters in a peaceful and mirror-like calmness, it must not be supposed that all access to them from the sea is excluded. It almost invariably happens that in the line of reef one or more openings occur, which, though sometimes narrow and intricate, so as scarcely to allow the passage of a native canoe, are not unfrequently of sufficient width and depth to permit the free ingress of large ships.

11. The advantage to man of these openings is very great. Without them, the islands might smile invitingly, but in vain no access could be obtained to them by shipping, through the tremendous surf by which their shores are lashed; but by these entrances the lovely lagoons are converted into the most quiet, safe, and commodious havens imaginable, where ships may lie and wood and water and

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