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)…
