Thomas Hardy — The Shadow On The Stone

          I went by the Druid stone         That broods in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows         That at some moments fall thereon         From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,         And they shaped in my imagining To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders          Threw there when she was gardening.           I thought her behind my back,         Yea, her I long had learned to lack, And I said: "I am sure you are standing behind me,         Though how do you get into this old track?"         And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf         As a sad response; and to keep down grief I would not turn my head to discover         That there was nothing in my belief.           Yet I wanted to look and see         That nobody stood at the back of me; But I thought once more: "Nay, I'll not unvision         A shape which, somehow, there may be."         So I went on softly from the glade,         And left her behind me throwing her shade, As she were indeed an apparition -         My head unturned lest my dream should fade. Begun 1913: finished 1916.