Page:Carroll - Phantasmagoria and other poems (1869).djvu/138

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126
ATALANTA IN CAMDEN-TOWN.

O that languishing yawn!
O those eloquent eyes!
I was drunk with the dawn
Of a splendid surmise—
I was stung by a look, I was slain by a tear, by a
tempest of sighs.

And I whispered "I guess
The sweet secret thou keepest,
And the dainty distress
That thou wistfully weepest;
And the question is 'License or banns?' though
undoubtedly banns are the cheapest."

Then her white hand I clasped,
And with kisses I crowned it:
But she glared and she gasped,
And she muttered "Confound it!"—
Or at least it was something like that, but the noise
of the omnibus drowned it.