Explore "Absent!" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You do not lift your eyes to watch / Us pass the conscious door; / Your startled ear perceiveth not / Our footfall on the floor; / No eager word your lips betray / To greet us when we stand; / We throng to meet you, but you hold / To us no beckoning hand.
Faint as the years in which we breathed, / Far as the death we died, / Dim as the faded battle-smoke, / We wander at your side; / Cold as a cause outlived, or lost, / Vague as the legends told / At twilight, of a mystic band / Circling an Age of Gold.