| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | Evanescence | | By Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901) |
| | | I SAW, I saw the lovely child | |
| I watch’d her by the way, | |
| I learnt her gestures sweet and wild, | |
| Her loving eyes and gay. | |
| |
| Her name?—I heard not, nay, nor care; | 5 |
| Enough it was for me | |
| To find her innocently fair | |
| And delicately free. | |
| |
| O cease and go ere dreams be done, | |
| Nor trace the angel’s birth, | 10 |
| Nor find the Paradisal one | |
| A blossom of the earth! | |
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| Thus is it with our subtlest joys,— | |
| How quick the soul’s alarm! | |
| How lightly deed or word destroys | 15 |
| That evanescent charm! | |
| |
| It comes unbidden, comes unbought, | |
| Unfetter’d flees away; | |
| His swiftest and his sweetest thought | |
| Can never poet say. | 20 | | | |
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