The Walk

You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
     As in earlier days,
     By the gated ways:
     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.