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 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.