The Walk

~ The Walk ~

You did not walk with me 

Of late to the hill-top tree 

By the gated ways, 

As in earlier days; 

You were weak and lame, 

So you never came, 

And I went alone, and I did not mind,

Not thinking of you as left behind. 

I walked up there to-day 

Just in the former way; 

Surveyed around 

The familiar ground 

By myself again: 

What difference, then? 

Only that underlying sense 

Of the look of a room on returning thence. 

~ Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)