Haunted by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A noisome mildewed vine
Crawls to the rotting eaves;
The gate has dropped from the rusty hinge,
And the walks are stamped with leaves.

Close by the shattered fence
The red-clay road runs by
To a haunted wood, where the hemlocks groan
And the willows sob and sigh.

Among the dank lush flowers
The spiteful fire-fly glows,
And a woman steals by the stagnant pond
Wrapt in her burial clothes.

There’s a dark blue scar on her throat,
And ever she makes a moan,
And the humid lizards gleam in the grass,
And the lichens weep on the stone;

And the Moon shrinks in a cloud,
And the traveller shakes with fear,
And an Owl on the skirts of the wood
Hoots, and says, Do you hear?

Go not there at night,
For a spell hangs over all –
The palsied elms, and the dismal road,
And the broken garden-wall.

O, go not there at night,
For a curse is on the place;
Go not there, for fear you meet
The Murdered face to face!

In A Country Churchyard by Edmund James Blunden

Earth is a quicksand; yon square tower
Would still seem bold,
But its bleak flinty strength each hour
Is losing hold.

Small sound of gasping undertow
In this green bed!
Who shuts the gate will shut it slow,
Here sleep the dead:

Here sleep, or slept; here, chance, they sleep,
Though still this soil
As mad and clammed as shoals acreep
Around them boil.

The earth slips down to the low brown
Moss-eaten wall
Each year, and nettles and grasses drown
Its crumbling crawl.

The dog-rose and ox-daisies on
Time’s tide come twirling,
And bubble and die where Joy is gone –
Sleep well, my darling.

Seldom the sexton with shrewd grin
Near thy grave-cloth,
With withered step and mumble thin
Awakes eve’s moth.

Not a farm boy dares here destroy,
Through red-toothed nettles,
The chiff-chaff’s nest, to strew the shells
Like fallen petals.

The silver-hooded moth upsprings,
The silver hour,
And wanders on with happy wings
By the hush tower,

That reels and whirs, and never drops,
That still is going;
For quicksand not an instant stops
Its deadly flowing.

And is Joy up and dancing there
Where deepening blue
Asks a new star? is that her hair
There freshed with dew?

Here, O the skull of some small wretch,
Some slaughtered jot,
And bones like bits of hated quitch
Recount fate’s plot.

So lies thy skull? This earth, even this
Like quicksand weaves.
Sleep well, my darling, though I kiss
Lime or dead leaves.

Sleep in the flux as on the breast,
In the vortex loll;
In mid simoom, my innocence, rest;
In lightning’s soul

Bower thyself! But, joyous eyes,
The deeps drag dull –
O morning smile and song, so lies
Thy tiny skull?

Written At Netley Abbey by Susan Evance

Why should I fear the spirits of the dead?
What if they wander at the hour of night,
Amid these sacred walls, with silent tread,
And dimly visible to mortal sight!
What if they ride upon the wandering gale,
And with low sighs alarm the listening ear;
Or swell a deep, a sadly-sounding wail,
Like solemn dirge of death ! why should I fear?
No ! seated on some fragment of rude stone,
While through the Ash-trees waving o’er my head
The wild winds pour their melancholy moan,
My soul, by fond imagination led,
Shall muse on days and years for ever flown,
And hold mysterious converse with the dead!

Whence? By Paul Hamilton Hayne

Eerily the wind doth blow
Through the woodland hollow;
Eerily forlorn and low,
Tremulous echoes follow!

Whence the low wind’s tortured plaint?
Burden hopeless, dreary,
As the anguished tones that faint
Down the Miserere.

Whence? From far-off seas its moan!
Darksome waves and lonely,
Where the tempest, overblown,
Leaves a death-calm only.

Thence it caught the awful cry
Of some last pale swimmer,
O’er whose drowning brain and eye
Life grows dim and dimmer –

Ere the billows claim their prey,
Settling stern and lonely.
Where the storm-clouds, rolled away,
Leave death-silence only!

So with pain the wind-heart sighs;
Through its sad commotion
Weary sea-tides sob, and rise
Wailing hints of Ocean!

Hist! oh hist! as spreads the mist,
Wood and hill-slope doming,
By no grace of starlight kissed,
‘Mid the shadowy gloaming,

Drearier grows the wind, more drear
Echoes shuddering follow,
Till a place of doom and fear
Seems that haunted hollow!

The Warning, from Death’s Jest Book by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

As sudden thunder
Pierces night;
As magic wonder,
Wild affright,
Rives asunder
Men’s delight:
Our ghost, our corpse and we
Rise to be.

As flies the lizard
Serpent fell;
As goblin vizard,
At the spell
Of pale wizard,
Sinks to hell:
Our life, our laugh, our lay
Pass away.

As wake the morning
Trumpets bright;
As snow-drop, scorning
Winter’s might,
Rises warning
Like a sprite:
We buried, dead, and slain
Rise again.

Written In A Ruinous Abbey by Susan Evance

As ‘mid these moldering walls I pensive stray,
With moss and ivy rudely overgrown,
I love to watch the last pale glimpse of day,
And hear the rising winds of evening moan.

How loud the gust comes sweeping o’er the vale!
Now faintly murmurs midst those distant trees;
The owl begins her melancholy wail,
Filling with shrieks the pauses of the breeze.

Fancy, thy wildest dreams engage my mind –
I gaze on forms which not to earth belong;
I see them riding on the passing wind,
And hear their sadly-sweet, expressive song.
Wrapped in the dear tho’ visionary sound,
In spells of rapture all my soul is bound!

The Churchyard of Bree by Mary C. Landon

 

Some say that these are dead,

And some, but dreaming:

But I can tell you nought

Of things unseeming.

The bellows blow down,

The swallows skirl,

The oak leaves in a ragged whirl

Run round to rue a ragged girl

Asleep above the town.

Irony by Olga Mishkin

 

A black, fathomless night,

Myriads of twinkling stars

Looking down upon a graveyard—

A dark, mysterious graveyard,

Cold, uncanny silent.

And many, many fireflies,

Dancing little fireflies,

Flitting in and out among the tombstones,

Tiny sparks of light

Hovering over tombstones,

Cold hard tombstones.
Two young lovers,

Beautiful, happy lovers,

Sitting on a dead slab of stone,

Embracing on a spiteful, scorning stone.

And the stars are merrily winking,

And the glow-worms are joyously twinkling.
A loud devilish laughter,

A derisive, piercing laughter—

The heart is chilled with fear—

An open groove of earth,

A coverless, gaping grave;

A form,

A white, transparent form,

A shimmering, uncertain form!

A pointing, mocking finger—

And laughter!

Will You Step Into My Grave, Sir? by Conrad Aiken

 

Will you step into my grave, sir? said the digger to the dead:

You will find it quite as restful, sir, as any human bed;

There’ll be lilacs at the head of you and violets at your feet,

In June the grass will cover you; and the snow will be your sheet.
The rain will thrill a song for you, the wind will tell a tale,

The willow roots will wrap your heart and hold and never fail,

And time will soon forget you, and yourself, forgetting time,

Will climb to sun and flash with leaves and fall again and climb.
I will stretch your bones out straightly, and lay you softly down,

And crown the fever of your days with slumber for a crown.

And none shall come to trouble you, and none shall call your name—

You shall not start at sound of love, nor stir at sound of blame…
Will you step into my grave, sir? said the digger to the dead—

It is more soft and quiet, far, than any human bed…

There’ll be oak trees at the head of you, and willows at the feet,

The blackbirds will sing for you, the snow will be your sheet.