Phantasmagoria

It is not that he is prosaic; far from that; but he replaces the solemn vision by the farcical phantasmagoria.

Again, he stood at the edge of the slow, terrific orbit of the Ferris Wheel, reeled down the blaring confusion of the midway, felt his staggering mind converge helplessly into all the mad phantasmagoria of the carnival; he heard Luke's wild story of the snake-eater, and shrieked in agony when they threatened to take him in.

They take their place in a phantasmagoria in which I endeavour to explain my philosophy of life and death, and till that philosophy has found some detailed exposition in prose certain passages in the poems named above may seem obscure.

He himself was all right, solidly there in the centre and quite determined to do all that he had planned to do, but everything else, however bright and noisy it might be, was at some remove from himself and reality, all phantasmagoria.

In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagoons, gondoliers;—mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities.