THERE must be many Theobalds' Roads in the universe; Images of images; almost, not quite, identical; A little above, a little below, slanting across, here but not quite here; Visible, tangible—but to me invisible, intangible. I look for her hat: I wait, she has not come. It is hardly time indeed, and it's pleasant to wait; But a little laughter sounds in my mind—a stranger Laughing there: 'You fool, she's waiting already. 'Time has many turnings, and Time and Space Multiply infinitely between them this crowded world. By mere chance she, coming out of the house to-day, Just where two were co-incident, entered the other. 'You can wait as long as you like, you will never meet her. She is gone for ever, as you from that other world Where she now is waiting have vanished,—unless hereafter Some shock may hurl you across into that world's reckoning. 'There—twenty years hence or thirty, who knows how long?— Again you shall meet, unhappy, desolate, old; You, unknowingly translated, shall see a face Where something moves that moved long since in your mind. 'It shall be there the only familiar thing After those years' long absence: if she shall know you What will she say or do? ... But as for the doctors, They may call it loss of memory, they may call it madness.' | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 9 by EZRA POUND THEN LAUGH by BERTHA ADAMS BACKUS THE JEW TO JESUS by FLORENCE KIPER FRANK BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS PALINGENESIS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW |