Page:Carroll - Three Sunsets.djvu/22

THREE SUNSETS In stern self-torture to invent
 * New luxuries of agony,

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

Then 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 swiftly as it came.

So, half in fancy's sunny trance,
 * And half in misery's aching void

With set and stony countenance
 * His bitter being he enjoyed,

And thrust for ever from his mind The happiness he could not find.

As when the wretch, in lonely room,
 * To selfish death is madly hurled,

The glamour of that fatal fume
 * Shuts out the wholesome living world—

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