Explore "After the Visit" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(_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.