HAUNTED
by Don Marquis

A ghost is a freak of a sick man's brain?
Then why do you start and shiver so?
That's the sob and drip of a leaky drain?
But it sounds like another noise we know!
The heavy drops drummed red and slow,
The drops ran down as slow as fate—
Do ye hear them still?—it was long ago!—
But here in the shadows I wait, and wait!

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?
Then why did ye whiten with fear to-day
When ye heard a voice in the calling wind?
Why did ye falter and look behind?
At the creeping mists when the hour grew late?
Ye would see my face were ye stricken blind!
And here in the shadows I wait, I wait!

Drink and forget, make merry and boast,
But the boast rings false and the jest is thin—
In the hour that I meet you ghost to ghost,
Stripped of the flesh that you skulk within,
Stripped to the coward soul 'ware of its sin,
Ye shall learn, ye shall learn, whether dead men hate!
Ah, a weary time has the waiting been,
But here in the shadows I wait, I wait!

THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION
by Thomas Hood

A Pathetic Ballad

"Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!"—Mercutio.

'Twas twelve o'clock by the Chelsea chimes,
When all in a hungry trim,
Good Mr. Jupp sat down to sup
With wife, and Kate and Jim.

Said he, "Upon this dainty cod
How bravely I shall sup"—
When, whiter than the tablecloth,
A ghost came rising up!

"O father dear, O mother dear,
Dear Kate, and brother Jim—
You know when some one went to sea—
Don't cry—but I am him!

"You hope some day with fond embrace
To greet your lonesome Jack,
But oh, I am come here to say
I'm never coming back!

"From Alexandria we set sail,
With corn, and oil, and figs,
But steering 'too much Sow,' we struck
Upon the Sow and Pigs!

"The ship we pumped till we could see
Old England from the tops;
When down she went with all our hands,
Right in the Channel's Chops.

"Just give a look in Norey's Chart,
The very place it tells:
I think it says twelve fathom deep,
Clay bottom, mixed with shells.

"Well, there we are till 'hands aloft,'
We have at last a call,
The pug I had for brother Jim,
Kate's parrot, too, and all."

"But oh, my spirit cannot rest
In Davy Jones's sod,
Till I've appeared to you and said,
'Don't sup on that there Cod!

"You live on land, and little think
What passes in the sea;
Last Sunday week, at 2 p. m.,
That Cod was picking me!

"Those oysters, too, that look so plump,
And seem so nicely done,
They put my corpse in many shells,
Instead of only one.

"Oh, do not eat those oysters, then,
And do not touch the shrimps;
When I was in my briny grave
They sucked my blood like imps!

"Don't eat what brutes would never eat,
The brutes I used to pat,
They'll know the smell they used to smell,
Just try the dog and cat!"

The spirit fled, they wept his fate,
And cried Alas, Alack!
At last up started brother Jim—
"Let's try if Jack, was Jack!"

They called the Dog, they called the Cat,
The little Kitten, too,
And down they put the Cod and sauce
To see what brutes would do.

Old Tray licked all the oysters up,
Puss never stood at crimps,
But munched the Cod—and little Kit
Quite feasted on the Shrimps!

The thing was odd, and minus Cod
And sauce, they stood like posts;
Oh, prudent folks, for fear of hoax,
Put no belief in Ghosts!

GHOSTS OF ARGONNE
by Grantland Rice

You can hear them at night when the moon is hidden;
They sound like the rustle of winter leaves,
Or lone lost winds that arise, unbidden,
Or rain that drips from the forest eaves,
As they glide again from their silent crosses
To meet and talk of their final fight,
Where over the group some stark tree tosses
Its eerie shadow across the night.

If you'll take some night with its moonless weather,
I know you will reason beyond a doubt
That the rain and the wind and the leaves together
Are making the sounds you will hear about:
The wintry rustle of dead leaves falling,
The whispering wind through the matted glen;
But I can swear it's a sergeant calling
The ghostly roll of his squad again.

They talk of war and its crimson glory,
And laugh at the trick which Fate has played;
And over and over they tell the story
Of their final charge through the Argonne glade;
But gathering in by hill and hollow
With their ghostly tramp on the rain-soaked loam,
There is one set rule which the clan must follow:
They never speak of returning home.

They whisper still of the rifles' clatter,
The riveting racket machine guns gave,
Until dawn comes and the clan must scatter
As each one glides to his waiting grave;
But here at the end of their last endeavor
However their stark dreams leap the foam
There is one set rule they will keep forever:
"Death to the Phantom who speaks of home!"

THE LITTLE GHOST
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.

And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone—
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on.

By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown's white folds among.

I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do—and oh!
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!

She bent above my favorite mint
With conscious garden grace,
She smiled and smiled—there was no hint
Of sadness in her face.

She held her gown on either side
To let her slippers show,
And up the walk she went with pride,
The way great ladies go.

And where the wall is built in new
And is of ivy bare
She paused—then opened and passed through
A gate that once was there.

THE SUPERSTITIOUS GHOST
by Arthur Gutterman
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!

Of course I'm told they can't exist,
That Nature would not let them:
But Willy Spook, the Humanist,
Declares that he has met them!

He says they do not glide like us,
But walk in eerie paces;
They're solid, not diaphanous,
With arms! and legs!! and faces!!!

And some are beggars, some are kings,
Some have and some are wanting,
They squander time in doing things,
Instead of simply haunting.

They talk of "art," the horrid crew,
And things they call "ambitions."—
Oh, yes, I know as well as you
They're only superstitions.

But should the dreadful day arrive
When, starting up, I see one,
I'm sure 'twill scare me quite alive;
And then—Oh, then I'll be one!

SEA GHOSTS
by May Byron

O' stormy nights, be they summer or winter,
Hurricane nights like these,
When spar and topsail are rag and splinter
Hurled o'er the sluicing seas,

To the jagged edge where the cliffs lean over,
Climb as you best may climb;
Lie there and listen where mysteries hover,
Haunting the tides of Time.

***

The crumbling surf on the shingle rattles,
The great waves topple and pour,
Full of the fury of ancient battles,
Clamant with cries of war.

The gale has summoned, the night has beckoned—
Lo, from the east and west,
Stately shadows arise unreckoned
Out of their deeps of rest!

Wild on the wind are voices ringing,
Echoes that throng the air,
Valiant voices, of victory singing,
Or dark with sublime despair.

To the distant drums with their rumbling hollow,
The answering trumpets blow:
War-horn and fife and cymbals follow,
From galleys of long ago.

The crested breaker on reef and boulder
That swirls in cavernous black,
Carries a challenge from decks that moulder
To ships that never came back.

The gale that swoops and the sea that wrestles
Are one in their wrath and might
With the crash and clashing of arméd vessels,
Grinding across the night.

Out of the dark the broadsides thunder,
Clattering to and fro:
The old sea-fighters, the old world's wonder,
Are manning their wrecks below.

You shall smell the smoke, you shall hear the crackle,
Shall mark on the surly blast
Rush and tear of the rending tackle,
Thud of the falling mast.

With the foam that flies and the spray that spatters,
Scourging the strand again,
A terrible outcry leaps and shatters—
Tumult of drowning men.

The steep gray cliff is alive and trembles—
Was never such fear as this!
A fleet, a fleet at its foot assembles
Out of the sea's abyss.

It quails and quivers, its grassy verges
Vibrant with uttermost dread:
It knows the groan of the laden surges,
The shout of the deathless Dead.

In a rolling march of reverberations,
Marching with wind and tide,
Heroes of unremembered nations
Vaunt their immortal pride.

Briton, Spaniard, Phœnician, Roman,
Gallant implacable hosts—
Locked in fight with phantom foeman,
Gather the grim sea-ghosts.

THE RETURN
by Minna Irving

I pushed the tangled grass away
And lifted up the stone,
And flitted down the churchyard path
With grasses overgrown.
I halted at my mother's door
And shook the rusty catch—
"The wind is rising fast," she said,
"It rattles at the latch."

I crossed the street and paused again
Before my husband's house,
My baby sat upon his knee
As quiet as a mouse.
I pulled the muslin curtain by,
He rose the blinds to draw—
"I feel a draught upon my back,
The night is cold and raw."

I met a man who loved me well
In days ere I was wed,
He did not hear, he did not see,
So silently I fled.
But when I found my poor old dog,
Though blind and deaf was he,
And feeble with his many years,
He turned and followed me.

A LEGEND
by May Kendall

Ay, an old story, yet it might
Have truth in it—who knows?
Of the heroine's breaking down one night
Just ere the curtain rose.

And suddenly, when fear and doubt
Had shaken every heart,
There stepped an unknown actress out,
To take the heroine's part.

But oh, the magic of her face,
And oh the songs she sung,
And oh the rapture of the place,
And oh the flowers they flung!

But she never stooped: they lay all night,
As when she turned away,
And left them—and the saddest light
Shone in her eyes of grey.

She gave a smile in glancing round,
And sighed, one fancied, then—
But never they knew where she was bound,
Or saw her face again,

But the old prompter, grey and frail,
They heard him murmur low,
"It only could be Meg Coverdale,
Died thirty years ago,

"In that old part, who took the town;
And she was fair, as fair
As when they shut the coffin down
On the gleam of her golden hair;

"And it wasn't hard to understand
How a lass as fair as she
Could never rest in the Promised Land,
Where none but angels be."

A MIDNIGHT VISITOR
by Elizabeth Akers Allen

After all the house is dark,
And the last soft step is still,
And the elm-bough's clear-cut shadow
Flickers on the window sill—

When the village lights are out,
And the watch-dogs all asleep,
And the misty silver radiance
Makes the shade look black and deep—

When, so silent is the night,
Not a dead leaf dares to fall,
And I only hear the death-watch
Ticking, ticking in the wall—

When no hidden mouse dares gnaw
At the silence dead and dumb,
And the very air seems waiting
For a Something that should come—

Suddenly, there stands my guest,
Whence he came I cannot see;
Not a door has swung before him,
Not a hand touched latch or key,

Not a rustle stirred the air;
Yet he stands there, brave and mute,
In his eyes a look of greeting,
In his hand an old-time flute.

Then, with all the courtly grace
Of the old Colonial school,
From the curtain-shadowed corner
Forth he draws a three-legged stool—

(Ah, it was not there before!
Search as closely as I may,
I can never, never find it
When I look for it by day!)

Places it beside my bed,
And while silently I gaze
Spell-bound by his mystic presence,
Seats himself thereon and plays.

Gracious, stately, grave and tall,
Always dressed from crown to toe
In the quaint elaborate fashion
Of a hundred years ago.

Doublet, small-clothes, silk-clocked hose;
Wears my midnight melodist,
Snowy ruffles in his bosom,
Snowy ruffles at his wrist.

Silver buckle at his knee,
Silver buckle on his shoe;
Powdered hair smoothed back and plaited
In a stiff old-fashioned queue.

If I stir he vanishes;
If I speak he flits away;
If I lie in utter silence,
He will sit for hours and play;

Play old wailing minor airs,
Melancholy, wild and slow,
Such, mayhap, as pleased the maidens
Of a hundred years ago.

All in vain I wait to hear
Ghostly histories of wrong
Unconfessed and unforgiven,
Unavenged and suffered long;

Not a story does he tell,
Not a single word he says—
Only sits and gazes at me
Steadily, and plays and plays.

Who is he, my midnight guest?
Wherefore does he haunt me so;
Coming from the misty shadows
Of a hundred years ago?

THE LISTENERS
by Walter de la Mare

"Is 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 the 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 gray eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only the 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 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 upon 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:
Aye, 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.

GHOSTS
by Robert Seymour Bridges

Mazing around my mind like moths at a shaded candle,
In my heart like lost bats in a cave fluttering,
Mock ye the charm whereby I thought reverently to lay you,
When to the wall I nail'd your reticent effigys ?

A POEM MY DAD WOULD LIKE

DAVE LILLY
by Joyce Kilmer

There's a brook on the side of Greylock that used to be full of trout,
But there's nothing there now but minnows; they say it is all fished out.
I fished there many a Summer day some twenty years ago,
And I never quit without getting a mess of a dozen or so.

There was a man, Dave Lilly, who lived on the North Adams road,
And he spent all his time fishing, while his neighbors reaped and sowed.
He was the luckiest fisherman in the Berkshire hills, I think.
And when he didn't go fishing he'd sit in the tavern and drink.

Well, Dave is dead and buried and nobody cares very much;
They have no use in Greylock for drunkards and loafers and such,
But I always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as you could wish,
He was shiftless and good-for-nothing, but he certainly could fish.

The other night I was walking up the hill from Williamstown
And I came to the brook I mentioned, and I stopped on the bridge and sat down.
I looked at the blackened water with its little flecks of white,
And I heard it ripple and whisper in the still of the Summer night.

And after I'd been there a minute it seemed to me I could feel
The presence of someone near me, and I heard the hum of a reel.
And the water was churned and broken, and something was brought to land
By a twist and a flirt of a shadowy rod in a deft and shadowy hand.

I scrambled down to the brookside and hunted all about;
There wasn't a sign of a fisherman; there wasn't a sign of a trout.
But I heard somebody chuckle behind the hollow oak
And I got a whiff of tobacco like Lilly used to smoke.

It's fifteen years, they tell me, since anyone fished that brook;
And there's nothing in it but minnows that nibble the bait off your hook.
But before the sun has risen and after the moon has set
I know that it's full of ghostly trout for Lilly's ghost to get.

I guess I'll go to the tavern and get a bottle of rye
And leave it down by the hollow oak, where Lilly's ghost went by.
I meant to go up on the hillside and try to find his grave
And put some flowers on it—but this will be better for Dave.