Happy birthday, Hardy.

Thomas Hardy was born on this day in 1840.

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