A selection of poems and excerpts for Halloween and the dark Gothic season that falls afterwards until it becomes Christmas (although who doesn’t enjoy a good ghost story at Christmas?)
SONG OF THE WITCHES
(From Macbeth)
By William Shakespeare
(1564 – 1616)
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Harpier cries “‘Tis time, ’tis time.”
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog
Wool of bat and tongue of dog
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing
For a charm of powerful trouble
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood
Then the charm is firm and good.
By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.
THE STOLEN CHILD
W. B. Yeats
(1865 – 1939)
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
than he can understand.
THE FAIRIES
By William Allingham
(1824 – 1889)
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap
And white owl’s feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake
With frogs for their watchdogs
All night awake.
High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with the music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow
They thought that she was fast asleep
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake
On a bed of fig-leaves
Watching till she wake.
By the craggy hillside
Through the mosses bare
They have planted thorn trees
For my pleasure, here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap
And white owl’s feather!
THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP
By Thomas Moore
(1779 – 1852)
They made her a grave, too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp
She paddles her white canoe.”
“And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be
And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree
When the footstep of death is near.”
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds –
His path was rugged and sore
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds
And man never trod before.
And when on the earth he sunk to sleep
If slumber his eyelids knew
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!
And near him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake
And the copper-snake breath’d in his ear
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake
“Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake
And the white canoe of my dear?”
He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play’d –
“Welcome,” he said, “my dear one’s light!”
And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid.
Till he hollow’d a boat of the birchen bark
Which carried him off from shore;
Far, far he follow’d the meteor spark
The wind was high and the clouds were dark
And the boat return’d no more.
But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp
To cross the Lake by a fire-fly lamp
And paddle their white canoe!
BEYOND THE LAST LAMP
Near Tooting Common
By Thomas Hardy
(1840 – 1928)
While rain, with eve in partnership
Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip
Beyond the last lone lamp I passed
Walking slowly, whispering sadly
Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:
Some heavy thought constrained each face
And blinded them to time and place.
The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed
In mental scenes no longer orbed
By love’s young rays. Each countenance
As it slowly, as it sadly
Caught the lamplight’s yellow glance
Held in suspense a misery
At things which had been or might be.
When I retrod that watery way
Some hours beyond the droop of day
Still I found pacing there the twain
Just as slowly, just as sadly
Heedless of the night and rain.
One could but wonder who they were
And what wild woe detained them there.
Though thirty years of blur and blot
Have slid since I beheld that spot
And saw in curious converse there
Moving slowly, moving sadly
That mysterious tragic pair
Its olden look may linger on –
All but the couple; they have gone.
Whither? Who knows, indeed … And yet
To me, when nights are weird and wet
Without those comrades there at tryst
Creeping slowly, creeping sadly
That lone lane does not exist.
There they seem brooding on their pain
And will, while such a lane remain.
DEAD MAN’S HATE
By Robert Ervin Howard
(1906 – 1936)
They hanged John Farrel in the dawn
amid the marketplace;
At dusk came Adam Brand to him
and spat upon his face.
“Ho neighbors all,” spake Adam Brand
“see ye John Farrel’s fate!
‘Tis proven here a hempen noose
is stronger than man’s hate!
For heard ye not John Farrel’s vow
to be avenged upon me
Come life or death? See how he hangs
high on the gallows tree!”
Yet never a word the people spoke
in fear and wild surprise
For the grisly corpse raised up its head
and stared with sightless eyes.
And with strange motions, slow and stiff
pointed at Adam Brand
And clambered down the gibbet tree
the noose within its hand.
With gaping mouth stood Adam Brand
like a statue carved of stone
Till the dead man laid a clammy hand
hard on his shoulder bone.
Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell;
the red blood left his face
And he reeled away in a drunken run
through the screaming market place;
And close behind, the dead man came
with a face like a mummy’s mask
And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked
with their unwonted task.
Men fled before the flying twain
or shrank with bated breath
And they saw on the face of Adam Brand
the seal set there by death.
He reeled on buckling legs that failed
yet on and on he fled;
So through the shuddering market-place
the dying fled the dead.
At the riverside fell Adam Brand
with a scream that rent the skies;
Across him fell John Farrel’s corpse
nor ever the twain did rise.
There was no wound on Adam Brand
but his brow was cold and damp
For the fear of death had blown out his life
as a witch blows out a lamp.
His lips were writhed in a horrid grin
like a fiend’s on Satan’s coals
And the men that looked on his face that day
his stare still haunts their souls.
Such was the fate of Adam Brand
a strange, unearthly fate;
For stronger than death or hempen noose
are the fires of a dead man’s hate.
THE HAUNTED OAK
By Paul Laurence Dunbar
(1872 – 1906)
Pray why are you so bare, so bare
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw
Runs a shudder over me?
My leaves were green as the best, I trow
And sap ran free in my veins
But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird
A guiltless victim’s pains.
I bent me down to hear his sigh;
I shook with his gurgling moan
And I trembled sore when they rode away
And left him here alone.
They’d charged him with the old, old crime
And set him fast in jail:
Oh, why does the dog howl all night long
And why does the night wind wail?
He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath
And he raised his hand to the sky;
But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear
And the steady tread drew nigh.
Who is it rides by night, by night
Over the moonlit road?
And what is the spur that keeps the pace
What is the galling goad?
And now they beat at the prison door
“Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within
And we fain would take him away
From those who ride fast on our heels
With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence
And the rope they bear is long.”
They have fooled the jailer with lying words
They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn
And the great door open flies.
Now they have taken him from the jail
And hard and fast they ride
And the leader laughs low down in his throat
As they halt my trunk beside.
Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black
And the doctor one of white
And the minister, with his oldest son
Was curiously bedight.
Oh, foolish man, why weep you now?
‘Tis but a little space
And the time will come when these shall dread
The mem’ry of your face.
I feel the rope against my bark
And the weight of him in my grain
I feel in the throe of his final woe
The touch of my own last pain.
And never more shall leaves come forth
On the bough that bears the ban;
I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead
From the curse of a guiltless man.
And ever the judge rides by, rides by
And goes to hunt the deer
And ever another rides his soul
In the guise of a mortal fear.
And ever the man he rides me hard
And never a night stays he;
For I feel his curse as a haunted bough
On the trunk of a haunted tree.
THE WITCH
By Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
(1861 – 1907)
I have walked a great while over the snow
And I am not tall nor strong.
My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set
And the way was hard and long.
I have wandered over the fruitful earth
But I never came here before.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!
The cutting wind is a cruel foe.
I dare not stand in the blast.
My hands are stone, and my voice a groan
And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!
Her voice was the voice that women have
Who plead for their heart’s desire.
She came – she came – and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.
It never was lit again on my hearth
Since I hurried across the floor
To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.
MARY’S GHOST
A Pathetic Ballad
By Thomas Hood
(1799 – 1845)
Twas in the middle of the night
To sleep young William tried
When Mary’s ghost came stealing in
And stood at his bedside.
O William dear! O William dear!
My rest eternal ceases;
Alas! my everlasting peace
Is broken into pieces.
I thought the last of all my cares
Would end with my last minute;
But though I went to my long home
I didn’t stay long in it.
The body-snatchers they have come
And made a snatch at me;
It’s very hard them kind of men
Won’t let a body be!
You thought that I was buried deep
Quite decent-like and chary
But from her grave in Mary-bone
They’ve come and boned your Mary.
The arm that used to take your arm
Is took to Dr. Vyse;
And both my legs are gone to walk
The hospital at Guy’s.
I vowed that you should have my hand
But fate gives us denial;
You’ll find it there, at Dr. Bell’s,
In spirits and a phial.
As for my feet, the little feet
You used to call so pretty
There’s one, I know, in Bedford Row
The t’other’s in the City.
I can’t tell where my head is gone
But Doctor Carpue can;
As for my trunk, it’s all packed up
To go by Pickford’s van.
I wish you’d go to Mr. P.
And save me such a ride;
I don’t half like the outside place
They’ve took for my inside.
The cock it crows – I must be gone!
My William, we must part!
But I’ll be yours in death, altho’
Sir Astley has my heart.
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 HAG
By Robert Herrick
(1591 – 1674)
The Hag is astride
This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
Through thick, and through thin
Now out, and then in
Though ne’r so foule be the weather.
A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now
Through Brakes and through Bryars
O’re Ditches, and Mires
She followes the Spirit that guides now.
No Beast, for his food
Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
While mischeifs, by these
On Land and on Seas
At noone of Night are working.
The storme will arise
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.
HAUNTED HOUSES
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807 – 1882)
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair
Along the passages they come and go
Impalpable impressions on the air
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts
As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys
And the more noble instinct that aspires.
These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.
And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night.
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
FROM THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772 – 1834)
The loud wind never reached the ship
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream
To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up-blew;
The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes
Where they were wont to do;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools –
We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother’s son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope
But he said nought to me.
“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!”
Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!
‘Twas not those souls that fled in pain
Which to their corses came again
But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawned – they dropped their arms
And clustered round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths
And from their bodies passed.
SPELLBOUND
By Emily Bronte
(1818 – 1848)
The night is darkening round me
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
THE LISTENERS
By Walter De La Mare
(1873 – 1936)
“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
“Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness
Their stillness answering his cry
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf
‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
“Tell them I came, and no one answered
That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup
And the sound of iron on stone
And how the silence surged softly backward
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
HER STRONG ENCHANTMENTS FAILING
By Alfred Edward Housman
(1859 – 1936)
Her strong enchantments failing
Her towers of fear in wreck
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck
The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry
“O young man, O my slayer
To-morrow you shall die.”
O Queen of air and darkness
I think ’tis truth you say
And I shall die tomorrow;
But you will die to-day.
THEY HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR
By Hansen Tor Adcock
[first published in Dreams & Nightmares magazine, issue 117]
A parade of strawberry children
From the Helix nebula’s tired eye
Slip through inter-dimensional gates
Looking for skins.
The vacuum of space does not crush them.
They wash themselves in solar winds,
Feast on anti-matter, and set their sights on the Sun
While their parent-guardians mine the Oort Cloud
Leagues away, oblivious.
As oblivious as us.
The vacuum of office work does not crush us.
We wash ourselves in mild acid,
Consume the burned flesh of animals,
Set our sights on retirement, and do not think of space,
Leagues above, dangerous.
The skinless race is coming,
And it wants to wear us.
They have no network of nerves,
No pressure sensors, no pleasure, no pain.
They want to feel the weight of our sky,
The golden sun,
The greyness of our rain.
They would gladly trade unfettered travel
To be rooted to the Earth, to be stable
Inside warm, reassuring bodies,
Cosseted by gravity.
The time is close.
All we need to do is breathe them in.
They’ll fall into our atmosphere.
They want our magic skin.
A MISSING LINK
by Hansen Tor Adcock
[first published in BFS Horizons]
He woke up. His pupils dilated. He sneezed.
The Moon crept cold and bright into the room,
And he slipped out of bed unseen.
A solitary god, man, or beast of gloom,
Of Morningstar, of God–
Something between.
The landscape makes a mockery of the soul,
Or feels with it. Outside he stands and sniffs.
Luminous, great moths, heeding a silent call,
Rush up to greet him in benevolent drifts.
He tolerates it. Even smiles. Soft brushing laugh.
And Up, the fat Moon smiles with him, “Where have you been?”
Inside him, it stirs a wrath–
sight unseen.
The wild East wind, weltering inside his narrow chest
Produces the Howl, a cry to the Night’s eye
Of the interior lupine’s bittersweet success.
The world burgeons grey, as scratching pain
Spreads across his skin, every hair sprouts, lengthening.
His nose and mouth conjoin in a yearning to the sky,
On the doorstep to Nature–
wanting to die.
In the morning, he remembers bursts of feeling.
Terror and beauty. Long, sad songs. Swift white water,
And her gleaming hair. He saw her, stealing
Through the ruins of the wily wood,
Glancing back like coy prey, to where he stood,
Saliva slavering at the sight of her,
Untouchable and pale as the Moon–
his night’s killing.
A few spooky website recommendations for you:
Author and ghostly researcher Richard Jones has compiled information on haunted locations and true ghost stories throughout Britain and Ireland. He is also something of an expert on Jack the Ripper:
https://www.haunted-britain.com/author-richard-jones.htm
A paranormal database here that covers not just ghostly but cryptozoological and folkloric stuff in the UK and other environs:
https://www.paranormaldatabase.com
Ghostly researcher and author Dr. Watson has a digital commonplace book / website devoted to all things “ghost” here:
https://notebookofghosts.com/the-notebook/
There are a few ghost-hunting YouTube channels I enjoy watching when there’s time. Two I’d highly recommend are The Paranormal Files and Amy’s Crypt.
I hope you all had a frightfully fantastic Halloween!
Nightwalks 