The Re-Enactment

BETWEEN the folding sea-downs,In the gloomOf a wailful wintry nightfall,When the boomOf the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,

Throbbed up the copse-clothed valleyFrom the shoreTo the chamber where I darkled,Sunk and soreWith gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before

To salute me in the dwellingThat of lateI had hired to waste a while in—Vague of date,Quaint, and remote—wherein I now expectant sate;

On the solitude, unsignalled,Broke a manWho, in air as if at home there,Seemed to scanEvery fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.

A stranger’s and no lover’sEyes were these,Eyes of a man who measuresWhat he seesBut vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.

Yea, his bearing was so absentAs he stood,It bespoke a chord so plaintiveIn his mood,That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude.

“Ah—the supper is just ready,”Then he said,“And the years’-long binned MadeiraFlashes red!”(There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)

“You will forgive my coming,Lady fair?I see you as at that timeRising there,The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.

“Yet no. How so? You wear notThe same gown,Your locks show woful difference,Are not brown:What, is it not as when I hither came from town?

“And the place . . . But you seem other—Can it be?What’s this that Time is doingUnto me?You dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she?

“And the house—things are much shifted.—Put them whereThey stood on this night’s fellow;Shift her chair:Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.”

I indulged him, verily nerve-strainedBeing alone,And I moved the things as bidden,One by one,And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown.

“Aha—now I can see her!Stand aside:Don’t thrust her from the tableWhere, meek-eyed,She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside.

“She serves me: now she rises,Goes to play . . .But you obstruct her, fill herWith dismay,And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!”

And, as ’twere useless longerTo persist,He sighed, and sought the entryEre I wist,And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.

That here some mighty passionOnce had burned,Which still the walls enghosted,I discerned,And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned.

I sat depressed; till, later,My Love came;But something in the chamberDimmed our flame,—An emanation, making our due words fall tame,

As if the intenser dramaShown me thereOf what the walls had witnessedFilled the air,And left no room for later passion anywhere.

So came it that our fervoursDid quite failOf future consummation—Being made quailBy the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale,

Which I, as years passed, faintlyLearnt to trace,—One of sad love, born full-wingedIn that placeWhere the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.

And as that month of winterCircles round,And the evening of the date-dayGrows embrowned,I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.

There, often—lone, forsaken—Queries breedWithin me; whether a phantomHad my heedOn that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed?