The Re-Enactment

Between the folding sea-downs,          In the gloom         Of a wailful wintry nightfall,          When the boom     Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,         Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley          From the shore         To the chamber where I darkled,          Sunk and sore     With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before         To salute me in the dwelling          That of late         I had hired to waste a while in -          Vague of date,     Quaint, and remote wherein I now expectant sate;         On the solitude, unsignalled,          Broke a man         Who, in air as if at home there,          Seemed to scan     Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.         A stranger's and no lover's          Eyes were these,         Eyes of a man who measures          What he sees     But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.         Yea, his bearing was so absent          As he stood,         It bespoke a chord so plaintive          In 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 Madeira          Flashes red!"     (There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)         "You will forgive my coming,          Lady fair?         I see you as at that time          Rising there,     The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.         "Yet no. How so? You wear not          The 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 doing          Unto me?     YOU dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she?         "And the house things are much shifted. -          Put them where         They stood on this night's fellow;          Shift her chair:     Here was the couch: and the piano should be there."         I indulged him, verily nerve-strained          Being 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 table          Where, meek-eyed,     She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside.         "She serves me: now she rises,          Goes to play . . .         But you obstruct her, fill her          With dismay,     And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!"         And, as 'twere useless longer          To persist,         He sighed, and sought the entry          Ere I wist,     And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.         That here some mighty passion          Once 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 chamber          Dimmed our flame, -     An emanation, making our due words fall tame,         As if the intenser drama          Shown me there         Of what the walls had witnessed          Filled the air,     And left no room for later passion anywhere.         So came it that our fervours          Did quite fail         Of future consummation -          Being made quail     By the weird witchery of the parlour's hidden tale,         Which I, as years passed, faintly          Learnt to trace, -         One of sad love, born full-winged          In that place     Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.         And as that month of winter          Circles round,         And the evening of the date-day          Grows embrowned,     I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.         There, often lone, forsaken -          Queries breed         Within me; whether a phantom          Had my heed     On that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed?