“ Something so weirdly wan, so weirdly still!
O yearning lips that our warm blood can flush,
Follow it with your kisses, if you will;
O beating heart, think of its helpless hush.
Oh, bitterest of all, to feel we fear
Something that was so near, that was so dear!
No—no, he is no ghost; he could not be;
Something that hides, forlorn, in frost and brier;
Something shut outside in the dark, while we
Laugh and forget by the familiar fire;
Something whose moan we call the wind, whose tears
Sound but as rain-drops in our human ears. ”

“ The Monks and the Nuns in the dead of the night
Tumble, all of them, out of their bed in affright,
Alarm'd by the bawls, And the calls and the squalls
Of some one who seemed running all round the walls!
Looking out, soon By the light of the moon
There appears most distinctly to ev'ry one's view,
And making, as seems to them, all this ado,
The form of a Knight with a beard like a Jew,
As black as if steep'd in that "Matchless" of Hunt's,
And so bushy, it would not disgrace Mr. Muntz;
A bare-footed Friar stands behind him, and shakes
A flagellum, whose lashes appear to be snakes ”

“ Do ye hear them still?—it was long ago!—
But here in the shadows I wait, and wait!
145 Spirits there be that pass in peace;
Mine passed in a whirl of wrath and dole;
And the hour that your choking breath shall cease
I will get my grip on your naked soul—
Nor pity may stay nor prayer cajole—
I would drag ye whining from Hell's own gate:
To me, to me, ye must pay the toll!
And here in the shadows I wait, I wait!
The dead they are dead, they are out of the way?
And the ghost is a whim of an ailing mind? ”

“ And there my sister smiles apart,
But nowhere is the fair, false love
That bent and broke my heart.
"Oh, false in life, oh, false in death,
Wherever thy mad spirit be,
Could it not come this night," she saith,
"And keep tryst with me?"
Mignon Isa has turned alone,
Bitter the pain and long the years;
The moonlight on the old gravestone
Was warmer than her tears.
All night the wild wind on the heath
Whistled its song of vague alarms;
All night in some mad dance of death
The poplars tossed their naked arms.
THE FORGOTTEN SOUL: MARGARET WIDDEMER ”

“ My heart will break in me!
Thy way to God thou must go alone,
I may not carry thee!"
The cock crew out the early dawn
Ere she could stay her moan;
She heard the cry of a little child,
Upon his way alone.
THE CHILD ALONE: ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON
They say the night has fallen chill—
But I know naught of mist or rain,
Only of two small hands that still
Beat on the darkness all in vain.
They say the wind blows high and wild
Down the long valleys to the sea;
But I can only hear the child,
Who weeps in darkness, wanting me. ”

“ For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.
6
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear—
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up straight and still!
7
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! ”

“ Your sad ghost follows after;
And blue the flame burns low,
And doors creak to and fro,
And silent grows the laughter.
THE WHITE MOTH: SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
If a leaf rustled she would start:
And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart
To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
Those little feet, in so much night? ”

“ Like a fancy—to your sad heart
It would seem
That my vision passed and prayed you,
Or my dream.
Then you would look with lonely eyes—
Lift your head—
And you would stir and sigh, and say,
"She is dead."
Baffled by death and love, I lean
Through the gloom.
O Lord of life! Am I forbid
To cross the room?
HAUNTED: DON MARQUIS
A ghost is a freak of a sick man's brain? ”

“ The ghost of a dead-and-gone bouquet,
Is all that tells of her story; yet
Could she think of a sweeter way?
I sit in the sad old house to-night—
Myself a ghost from a farther sea;
And I trust that this Quaker woman might,
In courtesy, visit me.
For the laugh is fled from the porch and lawn,
And the bugle died from the fort on the hill,
And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone,
And the grand piano is still.
Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two ”

“ I hear the sound of little feet,
Two little stumbling feet astray.
28 Oh, loud the autumn wind makes moan,
The desolate wind about my door,
And a little child goes all alone
Who never was alone before.
THE CHILD: THEODOSIA GARRISON
I heard her crying in the night,—
So long, so long I lay awake,
Watching the moonlight ebb and break
Against the sill like waves of light.
I tried to close my eyes nor heed
And lie quite still—but oh, again
The little voice of fright and pain
Sobbed in the darkness of her need.
Strange shadows led me down the stair ”

“ Waiting that grim old Skipper's command.
"The bullets are flying—huzza! huzza!
The bullets are flying—away! away!"—
82 The brawny boarders mount by the chains,
And are over their buckles in blood and in brains.
On the foeman's deck, where a man should be,
Young Hamilton Tighe waves his cutlass high,
And Capitaine Crapaud bends low at his knee.
Hairy-faced Dick, linstock in hand,
Is waiting that grim-looking Skipper's command:—
A wink comes sly from that sinister eye—
Hairy-faced Dick at once lets fly,
And knocks off the head of young Hamilton Tighe! ”

“ There was death at every window;
And Hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
3
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
4
She twisted her hands behind her ”

“ The Seven Whistlers have passed thy house, Pentruan of Porthmeor;
It was not in the morning, nor the noonday's golden grace,
It was in the dead waste midnight, when the tide yelped loud in the Race:
The tide swings round in the Race, and they're plaining whisht and low,
And they come from the gray sea-marshes, where the gray sea-lavenders grow,
And the cotton-grass sways to and fro ”

“ But I will stand beside you till you face the looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As lovely or unlucky or as lonely as I was."
41 The Queen was in her chamber, a-weeping very sore,
There came Lord Leicester's spirit and It scratched upon the door,
Singing, "Backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass,
But I will walk beside you till you face the looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass,
As hard and unforgiving and as wicked as you was!" ”

“ My little lad, my little lad,
A single year with God!
I sit and hide my head
Until they all are past,
Under the empty trees the dead
That go full soft and fast.
Up to my chamber dim,
Back to my bed I plod;
Oh, would I were a ghost with him,
And faring back to God!
A DREAM: WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night ”

“ His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
3
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
4
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim, the ostler, listened; his face was white and peaked ”

“ Of Holy Church should vainly sue:—
—Foot-pages they are by no means rare,
A thriftless crew, I ween, be they;
Well mote we spare A Page—or a pair,
For the matter of that—Sir Ingoldsby Bray,
92 But stout and true Soldiers like you,
Grow scarcer and scarcer every day!—
Be prayers for the dead Duly read,
Let a mass be sung, and a pater be said:
So may your qualms of conscience cease,
And the little Foot-page shall rest in peace!"
"Now pardon, Holy Father, I crave.
O Holy Father, pardon and grace!
Dame Alice, my wife, The bane of my life,
I have left, I fear me, in evil case! ”

“ Ay, the green sea-mountain leaping may lead horror in its rear,
When thy drenched sail leans to its yawning trough, Pentruan of Porthmeor!
Yet the stoup waits at thy doorway for its load of glittering ore,
And thy ships lie in the tideway, and thy flocks along the moore;
And thine arishes gleam softly when the October moonbeams wane,
When in the bay all shining the fishers set the seine;
The fishers cast the seine, and 'tis "Heva!" in the town,
And from the watch-rock on the hill the huers are shouting down ”

“ Comes Mary, Mary Shepherdess, a-seeking for her own.
Saint James he calls the righteous folk, Saint John he calls the kind,
Saint Peter seeks the valiant men all to loose or bind,
But Mary seeks the little souls that are so hard to find.
All the little sighing souls born of dust's despair,
They who fed on bitter bread when the world was bare,
Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair.
All about the windy down, housing in the ling,
Underneath the alder-bough linnet-light they cling,
Frighted of the shining house where the martyrs sing. ”

“ One runs to her for comforting,
And smiles within her arms again.
All night upon my heart she lay,
All night I held her warm and close,
Until the morning wind arose
And called across the world for day.
The garden odors drifted through
The open door; as still as they
She passed into the awful day,
A little, wistful child I knew. ”

“ But still my fever would not turn
To scarlet or to yellow!
"With madder and with turmeric,
He made his next attack;
But neither he nor all his drugs
Could stop my dying black.
At last I got so sick of life,
And sick of being dosed,
One Monday morning I gave up
My physic and the ghost!
"Oh, Phoebe dear, what pain it was
To sever every tie!
You know black beetles feel as much
As giants when they die. ”

“ He and she; still she did not move
To any passionate whisper of love.
Then he said, "Cold lips and breast without breath,
Is there no voice or language of death,
"Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,
But to heart and soul distinct, intense?
"See now; I will listen with soul, not ear:
What is the secret of dying, dear? ”

“ The love of Mary in thy heart
Did let me ease my child.
She may not leave the place of bliss,
I may not touch her hands and hair,
But every night I touch and kiss
The shoes she used to wear.
32
THE OPEN DOOR: ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON
O listen for her step when the fire burns hollow
When the low fire whispers and the white ash sinks,
When all about the chamber shadows troop and follow
As drowsier yet the hearth's red watchlight blinks. ”

“ She sank among the white ghost ships
And stained them through and through.
The grim Titanic greeted her.
"And who art thou?" she said;
"Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet
Arrayed in living red?
72 We are the ships of sorrow
Who spend the weary night,
Until the dawn of Judgment Day,
Obscure and still and white." ”

“ Rheims is down in fire and smoke,
The hour of God is at the stroke,
Round and round the ruined place,—
Jesus, Mary, give us grace!
There are two riders clad in mail
Silver as the moon is pale.
One is tall as a knight's spear,
The younger one is lowlier. ”

“ When they came to a grave, for there lay Glyndwr.
Said the one, "My sword, th'art rust, my dear,
I but brought thee home to break thee here."
And the second, "Ay, here is the narrow home,
To which our tired hearts are come!"
And the third, "We are all that are left, Glyndwr,
To guard thee now on Gamellyn moor."
Straightway I saw the dead forth-stand,
His good sword bright in his right hand,
And the marsh-reeds with a whistling sound,
To a thousand gray swordsmen were turned around.
The moon did shake in the south to see,
The dead man stand with his soldiery. ”

“ Though one got away, and ran up a tree!"
"Look nigher, look nigher, My trusty Squire!"
"One is the corse of a bare-footed Friar!"
Out and spake Sir Ingoldsby Bray,
"A boon, a boon, King Richard," quoth he,
"Now Heav'n thee save, A boon I crave,
A boon, Sir King, on my bended knee;
A year and a day Have I been away,
King Richard, from Ingoldsby Hall so free;
Dame Alice she sits there in lonely guise,
And she makes her moan, and she sobs and she sighs,
And tears like rain-drops fall from her eyes,
And she darneth her hose, and she crieth 'Alack! ”

“ Sir Astley has my heart.
111 "Don't go to weep upon my grave,
And think that there I be;
They haven't left an atom there
Of my anatomie."
THE SUPERSTITIOUS GHOST: ARTHUR GUITERMAN
I'm such a quiet little ghost,
Demure and inoffensive,
The other spirits say I'm most
Absurdly apprehensive.
Through all the merry hours of night
I'm uniformly cheerful;
I love the dark; but in the light,
I own I'm rather fearful.
Each dawn I cower down in bed,
In every brightness seeing
That weird uncanny form of dread—
An awful Human Being! ”