Unturned.

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