“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? HER SECRET THAT love’s dull smart distressed my heart He shrewdly learnt to see, But that I was in love with a dead man Never suspected he.