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