He always thought he could keep the last, but as the next began he lost the one before it, and at length awoke, struggling to keep hold of the last verse of all.

He felt as if the effort to keep from forgetting that one verse of the vanishing song nearly killed him.

And yet by the time he was wide awake he could not be sure of that even.

It was something like this: White hands of whiteness Wash the stars' faces, Till glitter, glitter, glit, goes their brightness Down to poor places.
This, however, was so near sense that he thought it could not be really what they did sing..