Haunted Landscape – Darkling, I Listen

The Ruined Homestead by Roland Robinson

White birds, frightened from silver grass,
whose blood-rose breasts and wings are thrown
like petals settling down the pass,
flower the ruined homestead’s stone.

Rise from the fallen walls and scream,
crested, from the stark dead gum;
shatter the crystal of the morning’s dream
where I, across your landscape, come.

Roofless, the broken stonework frames
red arid hills, a valley where
the ghost-gums writhe like whitened flames
and desert-oaks droop their dark hair.

And when, in the crucible of the hills
the molten day has died, there stands
under the blaze of stars that fills
its night, a house not made with hands.

A Ghost Story by Randall Jarrell

The fox lifts his head from the feathers

And stares to the goose in the sky;

A song drifts from the bars of the tower

To the sow asleep in her sty.

The crushed or folded flower

Is grey in the grey of the moon;

The moonlight dreams of moonlight.

The vacant whorls of the tune
Ripple like wheat to the shepherd

from the light in the empty tower.

He nods, and the blurred moon sets.

The voice laughs over and over,
The ticking shriek of the crickets

Fades; and a long, light sigh

Trails over the lonely valley,

The leaves stir absently.

Voices by Frances Bellerby

I heard those voices today again:

Voices of women and children, down in that hollow

Of blazing light into which swoops the tree-darkened lane

Before it mounts up into the shadow again.

I turned the bend–just as always before

There was no one at all down there in the sunlit hollow;

Only ferns in the wall, foxglove by the hanging door

Of the blind old desolate cottage. And just as before

I noticed the leaping glitter of light

Where the steam runs under the lane; in that mine-dark archway

–Water and stones unseen as though in the gloom of night–

Like glittering fish slithers and leaps the light.

I waited long at the bend of the lane,

But heard only the murmuring water under the archway.

Yet I tell you, I’ve been to that place again and again,

And always, in summer weather, those voices are plain,

Down near that broken house, just where the tree-darkened lane

Swoops into the hollow of light before mounting to shadow again.

In the Fog By Giovanni Pascoli (Translated by Geoffrey Brock)

I stared into the valley: it was gone—
wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,
gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.

And here and there I noticed, when I strained,
the alien clamoring of small, wild voices:
birds that had lost their way in that vain land.

And high above, the skeletons of beeches,
as if suspended, and the reveries
of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches.

And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear,
I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard
strange footsteps, neither far away nor near—

echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick,
alternating, eternal. Down I stared,
but I saw nothing, no one, looking back.

The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no
one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired:
“And who are you, forever on the go?”

I may have seen a shadow then, an errant
shadow, bearing a bundle on its head.
I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant.

All I could hear were the uneasy screeches
of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray,
and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches,

the footsteps, neither near nor far away.

Shadow Land by Johannes Bobrowski (Translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead)

The rustling voices,

leaves, birds, I came

three ways before a great snow.

On the bank, burrs and awns

in her ringlets, Ragana with her hounds

shouted for the ferryman, he stood

in the water, midstream.

Once,

following the mists

across the dell with golden wings,

the bustard flew, they set

horny feet on the grass,

light, the day, flew after them.

Cold. On the tip of a grass-blade

the emptiness, white,

reaching to the sky. But the tree

old, there is

a shore, mists with thin

bones move on the river.

Darkness, whoever lives here

speaks with the bird’s voice.

Lanterns have glided

above the forests.

No breath has moved them.

After Sunset by Rosamund Marriott Watson

The black downs tower to westward

A tomb for the buried sun,

The flats of the water meadows

Are fading from green to dun.

Dark spreads the vast arena,

Swart on the yellow light,

And out of the gloom and the silence

A strange voice cries to the night.

Cries — and a strange voice answers,

Sudden, and hoarse, and slow.

Heavy with pain past telling.

The weight of a monstrous woe.

Still, as I wait and hearken,

I know not which they may be;

Voices of down and marshland.

Or the voice of my heart in me.

But I know that the cry they echo

Was old when the world was young,

The plaint of a nameless sorrow

Whose speech is an unknown tongue.

To Melancholy by Ann Radcliffe (from The Mysteries of Udolpho)

Spirit of love and sorrow—hail!

Thy solemn voice from far I hear,

Mingling with ev’ning’s dying gale:

Hail, with this sadly-pleasing tear!
O! at this still, this lonely hour,

Thine own sweet hour of closing day,

Awake thy lute, whose charmful pow’r

Shall call up Fancy to obey.
To paint the wild romantic dream,

That meets the poet’s musing eye,

As on the bank of shadowy stream,

He breathes to her the fervid sigh.
O lonely spirit! let thy song

Lead me through all thy sacred haunt;

The minster’s moon-light aisles along,

Where spectres raise the midnight chaunt.
I hear their dirges faintly swell!

Then, sink at once in silence drear;

While, from the pillar’d cloister’s cell,

Dimly their gliding forms appear!
Lead where the pine-woods wave on high,

Whose pathless sod is darkly seen,

As the cold moon, with trembling eye,

Darts her long beams the leaves between.
Lead to the mountain’s dusky head,

Where, far below, in shade profound,

Wide forests, plains, and hamlets, spread,

And sad the chimes of vesper sound.
Or guide me where the dashing oar

Just breaks the stillness of the vale;

As slow it tracks the winding shore,

To meet the ocean’s distant sail:
To pebbly banks, that Neptune laves,

With measur’d surges, loud and deep;

Where the dark cliff bends o’er the waves,

And wild the winds of autumn sweep:
There pause at midnight’s spectred hour,

And list the long-resounding gale:

And catch the fleeting moon-light’s pow’r,

O’er foaming seas and distant sail.“

Haunted by Ina Donna Coolbrith

The water, lapping, lapping in the reeds!
What stood beside it in the waning moon
And gave to it the sigh and sob of tears?
The sound of tears that nevermore is still-
The water lapping, lapping in the reeds.

Was it a shadow there?
Or but the thin mist shifting in the wind
Beneath the paling moon
Of night’s mid-noon?
Only the mist that like a thin white wraith,
Sees and unseen-
A white wan wraith
Beside the matted rushes of the pool
That lies below the hill?
Lies like a thing of ill,
Its slow dark waters lapping in the reeds,
With sigh and sob of tears-
With sound of tears that never can be still,
The water lapping, lapping in the reeds.

Night by Ann Radcliffe (from Romance of the Forest)

Now Ev’ning fades! her pensive step retires,

And Night leads on the dews, and shadowy hours:

Her awful pomp of planetary fires,

And all her train of visionary powers.
These paint with fleeting shapes the dream of sleep,

These swell the waking soul with pleasing dread;

These through the glooms in forms terrific sweep,

And rouse the thrilling horrors of the dead!
Queen of the solemn thought—mysterious Night!

Whose step is darkness, and whose voice is fear!

Thy shades I welcome with severe delight,

And hail thy hollow gales, that sigh so drear!
When, wrapt in clouds, and riding in the blast,

Thou roll’st the storm along the sounding shore,

I love to watch the whelming billows, cast

On rocks below, and listen to the roar.
Thy milder terrors, Night, I frequent woo,

Thy silent lightnings, and thy meteor’s glare,

Thy northern fires, bright with ensanguine hue,

That light in heaven’s high vault the fervid air.
But chief I love thee, when thy lucid car

Sheds through the fleecy clouds a trembling gleam,

And shews the misty mountain from afar,

The nearer forest, and the valley’s stream:
And nameless objects in the vale below,

That floating dimly to the musing eye,

Assume, at Fancy’s touch, fantastic shew,

And raise her sweet romantic visions high.
Then let me stand amidst thy glooms profound

On some wild woody steep, and hear the breeze

That swells in mournful melody around,

And faintly dies upon the distant trees.
What melancholy charm steals o’er the mind!

What hallow’d tears the rising rapture greet!

While many a viewless spirit in the wind

Sighs to the lonely hour in accents sweet!
Ah! who the dear illusions pleas’d would yield,

Which Fancy wakes from silence and from shades,

For all the sober forms of Truth reveal’d,

For all the scenes that Day’s bright eye pervades!

Haunted Spot by Emma Lazarus

The close-twined branches interlock o’erhead,

‘Twixt leaf and leaf no ray, no glimpse of blue;

From the live roof is gray green twilight shed,

Heavily clings at noon the dull chill dew;

The snake-like roots of the large trees break through

The black, moist sod; rank weeds spread everywhere,

Damp shadow and mirk vapors fill the air.
A yellowish pool hath slowly filtered here

From drip and ooze and frequent wash of rains:

No lapse of living waters greets the ear,

Thick crust of slime its sluggish surface stains.

Here Silence dwells — a vague, wild terror gains

The soul before this mystery divine,

Evil in action, evil in design.
The poisoned flower hath overwrought the brain.

The wood seems peopled with strange images,

Huge forms uncouth in slow unending train,

Life’s terrors and its nameless miseries,

Now like a sullen mist between the trees,

Now close and threatening, distinct and near,

While hateful discords grate upon the ear.
Sin, madness, poverty, disease and age,

And, halting last, the unmixed evil, death.

How near to her they come, life’s heritage

Of ancient ills! No outlet openeth:

Her wild cry echoes far above, beneath,

Fills the thick air with trouble, wanes and dies,

Meeting the hollow earth and empty skies.