<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=384665" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Phantom Ball</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">You remember the hall on the corner?<br>To-night as I walked down street<br>I heard the sound of music,<br>And the rhythmic beat and beat,<br>In time to the pulsing measure<br>Of lightly tripping feet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And I turned and entered the doorway-<br>It was years since I had been there-<br>Years, and life seemed altered:<br>Pleasure had changed to care.<br>But again I was hearing the music<br>And watching the dancers fair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And then, as I stood and listened,<br>The music lost its glee;<br>And instead of the merry waltzers<br>There were ghosts of the Used-to-be-<br>Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers<br>Who once had danced with me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Oh, 'twas a ghastly picture!<br>Oh, 'twas a gruesome crowd!<br>Each bearing a skull on his shoulder,<br>Each trailing a long white shroud,<br>As they whirled in the dance together,<br>And the music shrieked aloud.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>As they danced, their dry bones rattled<br>Like shutters in a blast;<br>And they stared from eyeless sockets<br>On me as they circled past;<br>And the music that kept them whirling<br>Was a funeral dirge played fast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Some of them wore their face-cloths,<br>Others were rotted away.<br>Some had mould on their garments,<br>And some seemed dead but a day.<br>Corpses all, but I knew them<br>As friends, once blithe and gay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Beauty and strength and manhood-<br>And this was the end of it all:<br>Nothing but phantoms whirling<br>In a ghastly skeleton ball.<br>But the music ceased-and they vanished,<br>And I came away from the hall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ella+Wheeler+Wilcox">Ella Wheeler Wilcox</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=384665" data-title="The Phantom Ball de Ella Wheeler Wilcox" data-description="You remember the hall on the corner? To-night as I walked down street I heard the sound of music, And the rhythmic beat and beat, In time to the pulsing measure Of lightly tripping feet. And I turned and entered the doorway- It was years since I..."></div> </div> </div>

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