After The Visit

(To F. E. D.)         Come again to the place     Where your presence was as a leaf that skims     Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims         The bloom on the farer's face.         Come again, with the feet     That were light on the green as a thistledown ball,     And those mute ministrations to one and to all         Beyond a man's saying sweet.         Until then the faint scent     Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away,     And I marked not the charm in the changes of day         As the cloud-colours came and went.         Through the dark corridors     Your walk was so soundless I did not know     Your form from a phantom's of long ago         Said to pass on the ancient floors,         Till you drew from the shade,     And I saw the large luminous living eyes     Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise         As those of a soul that weighed,         Scarce consciously,     The eternal question of what Life was,     And why we were there, and by whose strange laws         That which mattered most could not be.