Glances even at an apparition
still seem somehow to reverberate;
here on this black fell, though, the emission
of your strongest gaze will dissipate:
as a maniac, precipitated
into the surrounding black, will be
halted headlong and evaporated
by his padded cell’s absorbency.
All the glances she was ever swept with
on herself she seems to be concealing,
where, with lowering and peevish mind, they’re
being downlooked upon by her and slept with.
As if wakened, though, she turns her face
full upon your own quite suddenly,
and in the yellow amber of those sealing
eyes of hers you unexpectedly
meet the glance you’ve given her, enshrined there
like an insect of some vanished race.