Revenge as Flattery

The poem features a speaker who essentially creates a fantasy of revenge: because his beloved is rejecting him in the present, he threatens to return to her bedside as a ghost and haunt her; this haunting, he imagines, will acquaint her with the same pain of rejection he now faces. The speaker paints an eerie and haunting portrait of this future, saying he will appear at her bedside, the candle will flicker, and she will turn to her new lover for help. But the new lover, the speaker says, will "shrink" from her, thinking she is only interested in sex (10). Left alone with the ghost of the speaker, the lady will become a ghost herself, or, as the speaker says, "A verier ghost than I" (13). The tone of the poem is undoubtedly a threatening one as the speaker imagines how his ghostly self will...