Category: Ghosts

The Kind Ghosts by Wilfred Owen

She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.

She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.

The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.

They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.

The Phantom by Henry Sylvester Cornwell

Out in the dark old forest,
There dwells a phantom of woe;
When the winds arise I can hear his sighs,
As he wanders to and fro!

He smites the woods in his frenzy,
He strips the branches bare,
And sows like chaff, with a demon laugh,
The blood-red leaves on the air!

He wrestles with woes Titanic,
And dark deeds unforgiven;
And grieves alone in a tongue unknown,
Like a soul shut out of heaven.

Above the crash of the tempest,
And the dismal roar of the rain,
When the bare limbs creak, I can hear his shriek
Of terror and of pain!

Last night from my chamber window,
I saw in the midst of the swamp,—
Through the murky gloom, his black pine plume,
And the gleam of his spectral lamp!

Outright his baleful omen
Three times the owlet cried;
And on the hearth the cricket’s mirth
In sudden silence died.

In the midnight dead and solemn
He troubles my spirit most;
For the soul still hears, though mortal ears
Their grosser sense have lost.

From trouble-haunted slumber
I start to hear aghast—
In the darkness deep, the awful sweep
Of his phantom steed—the blast.

But when, like a captive lady,
Looks the moon from her cloudy tower,
And the winds are at rest he loveth best
The influence of the hour.

Ah, then, the shadowy giant,
In mountain caverns deep,
Find space of rest for his troubled breast,
And grieves himself to sleep!

Oh, say, do I live in Witchland?
Or is it the fever flame,
Whence fear is fed by a morbid dread
Of something without a name?

For there dwells in the forest somewhere,
I am sure, a phantom of woe;
When the winds arise I can hear his sighs,
As he wanders to and fro!

Meeting of Phantoms by Anders Osterling

 

I in a vision

Saw my lost sweetheart.

Fearlessly toward me

I saw her stray.

So pale! I thought then;

She smiled her answer:

“My heart, my spirit

I’ve kissed away.

“I to the breezes

Gave my life gladly,

Soon it was vanished,

Gone with a breath.

If I have grieved you,

Pardon the sorrow;

We are but phantoms,

Like now in death.”

My voice I heard then:

“That is forgiven

If unremembrance

Can pardon aught.

Give me again but

My heart, my spirit,–  

You alone found them

Of all that sought.”

Then I came nearer:

“Give me them quickly!

My road is long, love,

I cannot stay.”

She never heard me,

She in the night sang:

“All heart, all spirit

I’ve kissed away.”

I looked aside then,

By memory tortured,

Shrank back in terror

Toward daylight’s door.

I felt upon me

Those dark eyes resting,

Eyes that too well knew

My heart before.

Like wand’ring phantoms

Meseemed we both were–

A sigh, a whisper,

And fled was she.

No more could either

Help now the other,

We saw but, grieving,

That it was we.

The Glimpse by Thomas Hardy

 

She sped through the door

And, following in haste,

And stirred to the core,

I entered hot-faced;

But I could not find her,

No sign was behind her.

‘Where is she?’ I said:

“Who?” they asked that sat there;

“Not a soul’s come in sight.”

‘A maid with red hair.’

“Ah.” They paled. “She is dead.

People see her at night,

But you are the first

On whom she has burst

In the keen common light.”
It was ages ago,

When I was quite strong:

I have waited since,—O,

I have waited so long!

Yea, I set me to own

The house, where now lone

I dwell in void rooms

Booming hollow as tombs!

But I never come near her,

Though nightly I hear her.

And my cheek has grown thin

And my hair has grown gray

With this waiting therein;

But she still keeps away!

The Shadow On The Stone by Thomas Hardy

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?’
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision
A shape which, somehow, there may be.’
So I went on softly from the glade,
And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition—
My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Something Tapped by Thomas Hardy

 

Something tapped on the pane of my room

When there was never a trace

Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom

My weary Belovèd’s face.
“O I am tired of waiting,” she said,

“Night, morn, noon, afternoon;

So cold it is in my lonely bed,

And I thought you would join me soon!”
I rose and neared the window-glass,

But vanished thence had she:

Only a pallid moth, alas,

Tapped at the pane for me.

The Phantom Ball by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You remember the hall on the corner?
To-night as I walked down street
I heard the sound of music,
And the rhythmic beat and beat,
In time to the pulsing measure
Of lightly tripping feet.

And I turned and entered the doorway—
It was years since I had been there—
Years, and life seemed altered:
Pleasure had changed to care.
But again I was hearing the music
And watching the dancers fair.

And then, as I stood and listened,
The music lost its glee;
And instead of the merry waltzers
There were ghosts of the Used-to-be—
Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers
Who once had danced with me.

Oh, ‘twas a ghastly picture!
Oh, ’twas a gruesome crowd!
Each bearing a skull on his shoulder,
Each trailing a long white shroud,
As they whirled in the dance together,
And the music shrieked aloud.

As they danced, their dry bones rattled
Like shutters in a blast;
And they stared from eyeless sockets
On me as they circled past;
And the music that kept them whirling
Was a funeral dirge played fast.

Some of them wore their face-cloths,
Others were rotted away.
Some had mould on their garments,
And some seemed dead but a day.
Corpses all, but I knew them
As friends, once blithe and gay.

Beauty and strength and manhood—
And this was the end of it all:
Nothing but phantoms whirling
In a ghastly skeleton ball.
But the music ceased—and they vanished,
And I came away from the hall.

At The Piano by Thomas Hardy

A Woman was playing,
A man looking on;
And the mould of her face,
And her neck, and her hair,
Which the rays fell upon
Of the two candles there,
Sent him mentally straying
In some fancy-place
Where pain had no trace.
A cowled Apparition
Came pushing between;
And her notes seemed to sigh;
And the lights to burn pale,
As a spell numbed the scene.
But the maid saw no bale,
And the man no monition;
And Time laughed awry,
And the Phantom hid nigh.

Ghosts in Love by Vachel Lindsay

“Tell me, where do ghosts in love
Find their bridal veils?”

“If you and I were ghosts in love
We’d climb the cliffs of Mystery,
Above the sea of Wails.
I’d trim your gray and streaming hair
With veils of Fantasy
From the tree of Memory.
‘Tis there the ghosts that fall in love
Find their bridal veils.”

The Ghost Chamber by John Bannister Tabb

Into the lonely room,
Spawning an icy gloom,
Lost in a wandering swoon
Gloats the wide-horned moon.

Silent the shadows gray
Shrink from her touch away,
Loathing her leprous light
Spotting the robe of Night,
Moulting a hoary gloom
Over a haunted room.

Cometh no whisper there:
Spasms of dank despair
Curdle the echoes round,
Stifling the birth of sound
In the grim charnel-womb
Of the deserted room.

Stark are the staring walls,
Like unto lidless balls—
Domes of departed sleep—
Doomed evermore to keep
Watch o’er the prisoned gloom
Of the forsaken room.