Explore "The Shadow on the Stone" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.