The Re-Enactment

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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 hair.


  '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 nights 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?

© Thomas Hardy