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.”

Shadow by Robin Hyde

Hear me whisper, whisper to you
Through these empty rooms,
See my dress in the ripple
Of the shot-silk evening glooms,
Think my hands on the spinet
When a quiet breeze stirs
And a tortured phoenix evening
Burns in the brooding firs.

See my face lifted to you again
Praying for some small boon
Less to your clear endeavour
Than the white jest of the moon.
Dead world, dead lady,
And your own heart a-dying …
Hush … turn away swiftly …
It’s not I you hear crying.

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.

The Mist by John Copwer Powys

In and out of the mist
We waver, ghosts that we are!
And the hands and lips we have kissed
Beckon us from afar:
Beckon us, whisper us, cry to us.
In and out of the mist;
Mock us, elude us, fly from us;
The hands and lips we have kissed.

In and out of the mist, like ghosts
We waver along the shore.
Flickering phantom-hosts,
Lost evermore — evermore!
Whispering, beckoning, sighing,
Weeping, vexing the night.
Nothing can stop our crying.
Except red burning light!

Ghosts in the mist are we,
And ghosts are the planets who peer
And peep at our misery.
With their tender pitiful leer;
But the great vermilion sun
That in one moment’s blaze
Could melt, transfigure, and clarify.
And outline against eternity.
Our inmost selves and our troubled days,

The laughing, careless, reckless sun,
The life-giver, when all is done,
Knowing no weakness or tenderness,
Having no pity for our distress.
Sick to death of our mists and lies,
Pours himself upon other skies.

I Say I’ll Seek Her by Thomas Hardy

I say, “I’ll seek her side
Ere hindrance interposes;”
But eve in midnight closes,
And here I still abide.

When darkness wears I see
Her sad eyes in a vision;
They ask, “What indecision
Detains you, Love, from me? –

“The creaking hinge is oiled,
I have unbarred the backway,
But you tread not the trackway;
And shall the thing be spoiled?

“Far cockcrows echo shrill,
The shadows are abating,
And I am waiting, waiting;
But O, you tarry still!”

Ghosts by Marion Francis Brown

The wind is full of ghosts tonight.
Let them carry your body far.
Let them bury you out of sight
Under a brooding star.

I can not weep for blood or bone.
Flesh grown cold or eyes that stare.
Let them tuck you under a stone.
Little, little I care.

For the wind is full of ghosts that talk,
And I a rendezvous must keep
With something more than dust and chalk
Before I sleep.

Ghostlings by Dorothy Quick

 

Out of the silence of the night

Come icy fingers tipped with snow,

And a strange thin piping

That no birds know.
And there are misty figures

Ringing the world apart;

Casting unbearable terror

All around the heart.
Gaping, senseless, horrid faces

Coming from another world;

There are the nameless ghostlings.

The dark unfurled.
These are the nameless ghostlings.

Creeping slowly as the mist.

To weave the spells of horror

No mortal can resist.

Sonnet: Ghosts by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights
That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind
That smites us by the roadside – are the Night’s
Innumerable children. Unconfined
By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls,
Uneasy spirits, steal into the air
From ancient graveyards when the curfew tolls
At the day’s death. Pestilence and despair
Fly with the sightless bats at set of sun;
And wheresoever murders have been done,
In crowded palaces or lonely woods,
Where’er a soul has sold itself and lost
Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods
Some sad, invisible, accursed ghost!