Thomas Hardy, Pentargon Bay, Cornwall

From After a Journey:

I see what you are doing: you are leading me on

   To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,

The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone

  At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,

And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow

   That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,

          When you were all aglow,

And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!

Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,

   The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily;

Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me,

   For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.

Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,

   The bringing me here;nay, bring me here again!

          I am just the same as when

Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

Pentargan Bay