Read "Futility" by O. Henry online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
To be so near -- and then to vanish / Like some unreal creature of the sense; / To come so near that every fiber, tingling, / Makes ready welcome; then to surge / Back into the recesses of the strange, / Mysterious unknown. Ye gods! / What agony to feel thee slowly steal / Away from us when, with caught breath / And streaming eyes, and parted lips, / We fain would with convulsive gasp / And tortured features bow our frame / In one loud spasm of homage to thy spell! / But with what grief we find we can not do it; / The dream is o'er -- we can not sneeze.