The Veil and other poems/Who's That?

by Walter de la Mare

WHO'S THAT?

WHO'S that? Who's that? . . .
Oh, only a leaf on the stone;
And the sigh of the air in the fire.
Yet it seemed, as I sat,
Came company — not my own;
Stood there, with ardent gaze over dark, bowed
shoulder thrown
Till the dwindling flames leaped higher,
And showed fantasy flown.

Yet though the cheat is clear—
From transient illusion grown;
In the vague of my mind those eyes
Still haunt me. One stands so near
I could take his hand, and be gone: —
No more in this house of dreams to sojourn aloof,
alone:
Could sigh, with full heart, and arise.
And choke, 'Lead on.'