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.

 

-- Thomas Hardy