Page:Carroll - Phantasmagoria and other poems (1869).djvu/124

112  There comes a welcome summons—hope revives,
 * And fading eyes grow bright, and pulses quicken;

Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
 * Dispense the tongue and chicken.

Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
 * And all is tangled talk and mazy motion—

Much like a waving field of golden grain,
 * Or a tempestuous ocean.

And thus they give the time that Nature meant
 * For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,

To thoughtless din, and mindless merriment,
 * And waste of shoes and floors.

And one (we name him not) that flies the flowers,
 * That dreads the dances, and that shuns the salads,

They doom to pass in solitude the hours,
 * Writing acrostic-ballads.