After The Visit

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 shad 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.