Lewis Carroll

PHANTASMAGORIA AND OTHER POEMS
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The Second Voice

 They walked beside the wave-worn beach;
 Her tongue was very apt to teach,
 And now and then he did beseech
 
 She would abate her dulcet tone,
 Because the talk was all her own,
 And he was dull as any drone.
 
 She urged “No cheese is made of chalk”:
 And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
 Tuned to the footfall of a walk.
 
 Her voice was very full and rich,
 And, when at length she asked him “Which?”
 It mounted to its highest pitch.
 
 He a bewildered answer gave,
 Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,
 Lost in the echoes of the cave.
 
 He answered her he knew not what:
 Like shaft from bow at random shot,
 He spoke, but she regarded not.
 
 She waited not for his reply,
 But with a downward leaden eye
 Went on as if he were not by
 
 Sound argument and grave defence,
 Strange questions raised on “Why?” and “Whence?”
 And wildly tangled evidence.
 
 When he, with racked and whirling brain,
 Feebly implored her to explain,
 She simply said it all again.
 
 Wrenched with an agony intense,
 He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,
 And careless of all consequence:
 
 “Mind - I believe - is Essence - Ent -
 Abstract - that is - an Accident -
 Which we - that is to say - I meant - ”
 
 When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,
 At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
 She looked at him, and he was crushed.
 
 It needed not her calm reply:
 She fixed him with a stony eye,
 And he could neither fight nor fly.
 
 While she dissected, word by word,
 His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
 As might a cat a little bird.
 
 Then, having wholly overthrown
 His views, and stripped them to the bone,
 Proceeded to unfold her own.
 
 “Shall Man be Man?  And shall he miss
 Of other thoughts no thought but this,
 Harmonious dews of sober bliss?
 
 “What boots it?  Shall his fevered eye
 Through towering nothingness descry
 The grisly phantom hurry by?
 
 “And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;
 See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
 And redden in the dusky glare?
 
 “The meadows breathing amber light,
 The darkness toppling from the height,
 The feathery train of granite Night?
 
 “Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
 Through the thick curtain of his tears
 Catch glimpses of his earlier years,
 
 “And hear the sounds he knew of yore,
 Old shufflings on the sanded (...)
(......)