Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Thomas Ashe 1836–89Phantoms
M
Of all those women sweet,
Whom I have known! How tenderly their eyes
Flash thro’ the days—too fleet!—
Which long ago went by with sun and rain,
Flowers, or the winter snow;
And still thro’ memory’s palace-halls are fain
In rustling robes to go!
Or wed, or widow’d, or with milkless breasts,
Around those women stand,
Like mists that linger on the mountain crests
Rear’d in a phantom land;
And love is in their mien and in their look,
And from their lips a stream
Of tender words flows, smooth as any brook,
And softer than a dream:
And, one by one, holding my hands, they say
Things of the years agone;
And each head will a little turn away,
And each one still sigh on;
Because they think such meagre joy we had;
For love was little bold,
And youth had store, and chances to be glad,
And squander’d so his gold.
Blue eyes, and gray, and blacker than the sloe,
And dusk and golden hair,
And lips that broke in kisses long ago,
Like sun-kiss’d flowers, are there;
And warm fire-side, and sunny orchard wall,
And river-brink and bower,
And wood and hill, and morning and day-fall,
And every place and hour!
And each on each a white unclouded brow
Still as a sister bends,
As they would say, “love makes us kindred now,
Who sometime were his friends.”