Phantom

“ The head and upper part of the body were inclined slightly forward, the legs perfectly formed. At ten every forenoon, punctual to the hour, this phantom, emerging from the rock, stands, fixed and motionless as a statue, in its niche. ”

“ For the thing they pursued was a phantom never to be realized; but strangely enough, in the providence of God, the phantom pursuit led to greater benefits for the race than their highest hopes dared to dream. ”

“ Of this false phantom which the heart misled;
That spoke of peace, peace to the poor man's shed,
Then left him, houseless, to the tempest's gloom
That swept his hopes and comforts to the tomb!
High towered the grisly spectre, half concealed,
And gathering clouds its dismal forests veiled;190
The clouds disperse, and lo! 'mid murderous bands,
Dark in its might the hideous phantom stands!
Now see the triumph of its reign complete!
Behold it throned in its own sovereign seat!
[238] The orgies peal, the banners wave on high,195
And dark rocks ring to shouts of liberty! ”

“ We know it not, this atrocity of the English Regicides; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the most daring action any Body of Men to be met with in History ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. Dread Phantoms, glaring supernal on you,—when once they are quelled and their light snuffed out, none knows the terror of the Phantom! The Phantom is a poor paper-lantern with a candle-end in it, which any whipster dare now beard. ”

“ That night in phantom phalanx his splendid heroes march.
'Twas like a shield all gory, that sun of Austerlitz!
No bloody, ghostly phantom before our hero flits!
Ye idols of the people, who lead an army well,
Shall wield a nation's sceptre, in capitols shall dwell!
Past ages grim and hoary their victors loved to crown:
The flaming sword of conquest still wins sublime renown. ”

“ Just as the male shape approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as if in the grasp of the Shadow that towered between them; and there was a blood-stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom male was leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow swallowed them up—they were gone. ”

“ It is a spirit. The phantom—as phantom it surely is—fills them with alarm, but a voice cries out, "Be not afraid, it is I." It is said, Peter seeing some one walking on the water tried it himself, and would have drowned had not the strange spirit taken him by the hand. Then the phantom itself got into the boat—the winds at once went down—and, as the little ship touched the shore, the amazed disciples discover the night phantom to be the Lord Himself. ”

“ Then, ghostlike, riseth from dark spirit-depths,
Before my spirit’s eyes, some phantom form
Like some dream-being, grim and terrible,
Pressing with fearful weight upon my soul,
And clutching horribly around my heart.
It seems to speak right through me words like these:
‘If thou dost fail to gain the victory
O’er me with those blunt weapons of thy thought,
Thou art a fleeting phantom, nothing more,
Formed by thine own deluded imagery.’
Theodosius:
That is the destiny of all such men,
As do approach the world by thought alone.
The spirit’s voice dwells deep in every soul. ”

“ My terror has become heavier than the chain, my vertigo is born of a two-fold gulf....
Eons have passed by and all the worlds have ebbed into nothingness, like wreckage borne on a chasm-falling stream, taking with them the lost face of Belthoris. I am poised above the gaping maw of the Shadow.... Somehow, in another world, an exile phantom has written these words... a phantom who must fade utterly from time and place, even as I, the doomed priest Calaspa. ”

“ But the throbbing rhythm has died away: the dream is nearing an end. Swiftly the phantom rises, and makes as if to go. Tenderly it stoops over the fair face of the sleeper, and imprints a single kiss upon her brow. The music draws to a close, the appointed hour inexorably approaches. Longingly the phantom lingers, till a fear assails one, lest it tarry too long. ”

“ I went in, and stood a phantom at the window, looking into the dark quadrangle. A thin glimmering crescent hung in the frosty sky, and all heaven was strewn with stars. Over the steep roof at the other side spread on the dark azure of the night this glorious blazonry of the unfathomable Creator. ”

“ And far above the fevered gaze of them who are upon the ground, whose bodies are layered with the dregs of the earth and the wasted fields, the phantom cohort flows from the four corners of the horizon, drives back the sky's infinity and hides its blue deeps. ”

“ It shines and flickers in two separate tarts; it takes shape, the head rejoins the body, it is a phantom; the phantom gazes into the darkness with wild, baleful eyes, rises, grows bigger and blue, hovers for an instant and then speeds away to the zenith to open the door of the palace of the sun where butterflies flit from flower to flower and angels flit from star to star. ”

“ Some one, in his bedroom, in the street, on a journey, no matter where, suddenly see plainly and clearly the phantom of a relation or a friend of whom he was not thinking at the time and whom he knows to be thousands of miles away, in America, Asia or Africa as the case may be, for distance does not count. As a rule, the phantom says nothing; its presence, which is always brief, is but a sort of silent warning. Sometimes it seems a prey to futile and trivial anxieties. ”

“ That makes all things the wraiths of things that were?
It touches, one by one, the wayside posts,
And they are gone, a line of hurrying ghosts.
It creeps upon the towns with stealthy feet,
And men are phantoms on a phantom street. ”

“ Though the phantom in the house was more real to me than the bread I ate or the floor on which I trod, I can give you no impression of the atmosphere in which we lived day after day—of the suspense, of the dread of something we could not define, of the brooding horror that seemed to lurk in the shadows of the firelight, of the feeling always, day and night, that some unseen person was watching us. ”

“ Suddenly an unearthly cry sounds from the ruins, and a white form is dimly seen to glide among its broken arches; visions of ghosts, even in this materialistic age, rise unbidden; but the phantom after all is but a harmless white owl. So fright gives place to laughter; the lamp is lit, and supper is made as cheerful as possible. ”

“ And now it was, that, as it drew nigh, its stature appeared to grow less and less colossal, and the wild lineaments with which fancy had invested it, faded from sight, leaving the phantom a mere man, of tall frame indeed, but without a single characteristic of dress or person to delight the soul of wonder. ”

“ When the fog rolls in from the distant waters, and steals through the pines, wraith-like forms of a forgotten race seem to haunt the scenes of by-gone years. We may imagine the march of phantom throngs through the trees, to meet silent battalions beyond the hills. ”

“ In following as through a thick wood after the phantom our forefathers from time to time caught glimpses of the reality, which seemed so wonderful as it eluded them, and flitted back again into the thickets, that they declared it must be the phantom they were in search of, which was thus evidenced as actually existing. ”

“ A mighty phantom has answered my spell: an awful shape clouds the magic mirror! Reader, before me I behold the earthly tabernacle of Northangerland’s unsounded soul! There he stands: what a vessel to be moulded from the coarse clay of mortality! What a plant to spring from the rank soil of human existence! ”

“ And swell his train with all the lazy vapours
That hover in the air: an easy prey
To the gigantic phantom, whose curl'd wing,
Sweeps in these worthless triflers of the sky,
And wraps them in his bosom. Go, vain shadow!
Sick with the burthen of thy fancied greatness,
A breath of zephyr wafts thee into nothing,
Scatters thy spreading plumes, uncrowns thy front,
And drives thee downward to thy mother earth,
To mix with vapour and dissolve in dew.
Such are the dreams of hope, which to the eye
Of youthful inexperience, seem to touch
The pure, unclouded sky of certainty. ”

“ From such a God, why should man expect assistance? Why should he waste his days in fruitless prayer? Why should he fall upon his knees and implore a phantom—a phantom that is deaf, and dumb, and blind? ”

“ While looking down upon this marvelous panorama we were suddenly startled by a sight I shall never forget. Far down to the east another air ship was following at tremendous speed. Black and forbidding it plunged along through the fiery waves, as if bent on running us down. It was the counterpart of our own vessel. We seized each other's hands in amazement, overcome with horror. So brilliant was the scene below that it was an instant before we realized that the awful object was our own phantom, or shadow, cast upon the clouds beneath; but during that instant it was a terrifying sight. ”

“ The phantom presented itself before him and said:
“Go to the tomb of your wife and strike it with your pick; the earth will turn aside and you will behold her lying in her shroud. Take this little silver box, which contains a rose; open it and pass it before her nostrils three times, when she will awake as if from a deep sleep.”
La Rose hastened to the tomb of his wife, and everything happened as the phantom had predicted. ”

“ But you are a phantom, you have no body." All my ideas were upset. "Who are you—a vapor, a mist, a form of air? Give myself to you? First tell me who you are. Have you lived on the earth? Where do you come from?" ”

“ We might turn from the attractive vista which they reveal but for an alluring phantom which can never be disassociated from those imperial ruins, a face whose beauty and pathos draws us on irresistibly to solve the mystery of its gentle sadness. ”

“ Next, this point expanded into an ever wider circle, covered with a light, hazy veil which gradually dispersed, revealing a vague, floating image, like the apparitions raised by spiritualists and mediums at their sittings.
Then followed as it were a certain hesitation. The phantom image was striving with the diffuse shadow and seeking to attain life and light. Certain features became more pronounced. Outlines and separate planes took shape; and at last a flood of light issued from the phantom image and turned it into a dazzling picture, which seemed to be bathed in sunlight. ”

“ The light, filtering through shades of green and rose, gave Granger his first clear view of the Phantom’s face. With a start he fell back a step and stared at his captor out of gradually widening eyes. The last signs of stupor fled from his face, and a startled cry rose in his throat as the Phantom smilingly snatched the false mustache from his lips. ”

“ He slid from his horse, and, rifle in hand, stole forward in the direction of the grove, moving as silently and stealthily as a shadow, while his beast stood as if he were an equestrian statue awaiting the placing of some metallic hero upon his back. A phantom itself could not have glided forward with less noise than did he, and yet he was fully twenty yards away from his destination, with his eyes fixed upon the point of light, when he was discovered by some horse that belonged to the stranger, or strangers, which gave out a loud neigh, as a signal to his friends of the approach of danger. ”

“ Only one thought stood out clearly in the Phantom’s mind as he lay on his back in the tunnel breathing the suffocating fumes of the damp earth, and surrounded by a silence and a darkness so profound that he felt as if a vast void was separating him from the world of the living. His senses were numbed and his brain had ceased to function, but somehow his mind grasped the realization that this was the end of the Gray Phantom’s career. ”

“ King Leodogran rejoiced, But musing 'Shall I answer yea or nay?' Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw, Dreaming a slope of land that ever grew, Field after field, up to a height, the peak Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king, Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven, Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick, In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind, Stream'd to the peak, and mingled with the haze And made it thicker; while the phantom king Sent out at times a voice ”

“ And how could a phantom drive away demons, and show other indisputable evidences of power, and that not in any one place, like these so-called gods in human form, but making its divine power felt through the whole world, in drawing and congregating together all who are found disposed to lead a good and noble life? ”

“ The cry which I uttered and which so upset my friend, the jailer, creating some confusion in the prison, was called forth by the sudden disappearance of the phantom—it was so sudden that the space in the place where the corpse had been seemed to me more terrible than the corpse itself.
Such is the power of human imagination when, excited, it creates phantoms and visions, peopling the bottomless and ever silent emptiness with them. ”