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.     Begun 1913: finished 1916.