Marcette, Swamp Hag's poem follows a speaker who watches a mysterious woman move through a dream. She drifts out like a slow river, her dark hair and black skirt blending into the night. Her smile seems aimed at the speaker, or at herself, or at no one. Her glazed eyes, compared to a fishmonger's displays, look right through him, and he can't tell whether she sees him at all. He even says, "I'm not there," as if he were only a ghost in his own dream.
The speaker feels fascinated but powerless. He can only observe, while she sits on the curb and watches time slip away like sand in the undertow. The mood is hazy, quiet, and a little eerie, helped by soft images like hair as "windchimes / made of silken threads." Then she starts to speak, just one letter, "W—", and the speaker wakes. The cut-off word leaves a sense of loss and unanswered longing, the way a dream fades just as it begins to mean something.