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.
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