A speaker sees someone and the effect is dizzying, like wine going straight to her head. That pull is so strong that she walks through rainy London to meet a man who has been dead for ten years. The situation is deliberately strange—this feels like a séance, a haunting, or a moment when grief and longing make the dead seem vividly present. What matters is the feeling: a reckless, intoxicated desire to be close to someone lost.
The mood is dreamy, melancholy, and faintly eerie, but not frightening. Rain and the long gap of ten years create a sense of sorrow and longing. Yet the speaker says she forgot “old time, old death, old tears” for pleasure. For a brief moment, loss loses its weight, and remembering or meeting the dead feels more intoxicating than painful.