Category: Poetry
Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
ONE winter night, at half-past nine, Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy, I had come home, too late to dine, And supper, with cigars and wine, Was waiting in the study.
Chapters
1. Chapter 1
ONE winter night, at half-past nine, Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy, I had come home, too late to dine, And supper, with cigars and wine, Was waiting in the study.
2. Chapter 2“MY First—but don’t suppose,” he said, “I’m setting you a riddle— Is—if your Victim be in bed, Don’t touch the curtains at his head, But take them in the middle,
3. Chapter 3“They seem too proud,” said I, “to go To houses such as mine. Pray, how did they contrive to know So quickly that ‘the place was low,’ And that I ‘kept bad wine’?”
4. Chapter 4“OH, when I was a little Ghost, A merry time had we! Each seated on his favourite post, We chumped and chawed the buttered toast They gave us for our tea.”
5. Chapter 5The Phantom shook his head and smiled. “Consult them? Not a bit! ’Twould be a job to drive one wild, To satisfy one single child— There’d be no end to it!”
6. Chapter 6AS one who strives a hill to climb, Who never climbed before: Who finds it, in a little time, Grow every moment less sublime, And votes the thing a bore:
7. Chapter 7“WHAT’S this?” I pondered. “Have I slept? Or can I have been drinking?” But soon a gentler feeling crept Upon me, and I sat and wept An hour or so, like winking.