Saturday, February 2, 2019

SOME "OTHER" SHADOWS TO CONSIDER, AS WELL


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 un-vision
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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