Page:Carroll - Phantasmagoria and other poems (1869).djvu/202

190 The summer fled: the lonely man
 * Still lingered out the lessening days;

Still, as the night drew on, would scan
 * Each passing face with closer gaze—

Till, sick at heart, he turned away, And sighed "she will not come to-day."

So by degrees his spirit bent
 * To mock its own despairing cry,

In strange self-torture to invent
 * New luxuries of agony,

And people all the vacant space With visions of her perfect face:

Till for a moment she was nigh,
 * He heard no step, but she was there;

As if an angel suddenly
 * Were bodied from the viewless air,

And all her fine ethereal frame Should fade as strangely as it came.