As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
As If a Phantom Caress’d Me - meaning Summary
Loss Felt as Presence
The speaker experiences a brief, uncanny sensation of being touched by a vanished beloved while walking the shore. That imagined caress makes the poet feel accompanied, but the presence quickly dissolves, leaving absence and the emergence of hostile, mocking figures. The poem registers how grief and longing turn perception unstable, transforming a hopeful phantom into a more painful awareness of loss and unwanted memories in a liminal seascape.
Read Complete AnalysesAS if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore; But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore—the one I loved, that caress’d me, As I lean and look through the glimmering light—that one has utterly disappear’d, And those appear that are hateful to me, and mock me. 5
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