" The poet sees this, and with the energy of a master-mind, he
brings the invisible chimera of her entranced imagination into effective
operation. Argument with a man who denies first premises, and we submit
the assertion that vitality is no exception to the treatment of the dead,
amounts to that. We say, argument with such a man is worse than nothing;
it would be fallacious as the Eolian experiment of whistling the most
inspiriting jigs to an inanimate, and consequently unmusical, milestone,
opposing a transatlantic thunder-storm with "a more paper than powder"
"penny cracker," or setting an owl to outstare the meridian sun.
The poet knew and felt this, and therefore he ends the delusion and
controversy by an overt act:--
"The ghost then seized her all so grim,
All for to go along with him;
'Come, come,' said he, 'e'er morning beam.'"
To which she replies with the following determined announcement:--
"'I von't!' said she, and scream'd a scream,
Then she voke, and found she'd dream'd a dream!"
These are the last words we have left to descant upon: they are such as
should be the last; and, like _Joseph Surface_, "moral to the end.
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