Tag: Hauntings

Red Wings by Winifred Virginia Jackson

I hear the shadows moving among old trees;
I see cold, white mists face new ecstasies;
And I, a thing of tears
And fears.

I hear the dead feet travel in a row;
I see the torn leaves falling where they go;
And I, a sleeping stone
Age blown.

I hear the red winds of the west arise;
I see strange, wide and watchful, waiting eyes;
And I, a thing of dust
In trust.

The House of Silence by Thomas Hardy

That is a quiet place –
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.“
”–If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
And a brain spins there till dawn.“

“But I see nobody there, –
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.”
“–Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
To pierce the material screen.

“Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
Make all the precincts gleam.

“It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
An aion in an hour.”

Superstition: An Ode by Ann Radcliffe

High mid Alverna’s awful steeps,
Eternal shades, and silence dwell,
Save, when the gale resounding sweeps,
Sad strains are faintly heard to swell:

Enthron’d amid the wild impending rocks.
Involv’d in clouds, and brooding future woe,
The demon Superstition Nature shocks,
And waves her Sceptre o’er the world below.

Around her throne, amid the mingling glooms,
Wild—hideous forms are slowly seen to glide;
She bids them fly to shade earth’s brightest blooms,
And spread the blast of Desolation wide.

See! in the darkened air their fiery course!
The sweeping ruin settles o’er the land,
Terror leads on their steps with madd’ning force,
And Death and Vengeance close the ghastly band!

Mark the purple streams that flow!
Mark the deep empassioned woe!
Frantic Fury’s dying groan!
Virtue’s sigh, and Sorrow’s moan!

Wide—wide the phantoms swell the loaded air
With shrieks of anguish—madness and despair!
Cease your ruin! spectrs dire!
Cease your wild terrific sway!
Turn your steps—and check your ire,
Yield to peace and mourning day!“

The Return by Mary C. Landon

 

Light all the lamps in the windows:

I shall not come home.

I shall stay out here with the wind.

I want to roam.

Leave all the doors in the house wide:

I shall pass them by.

I am going up on a hill

And watch the sky.

Pile up the wood in the fireplace,

And then let it flare:

I am going where I can feel

The rain  in my hair.

Just before dawn I came creeping,

Cold and wet and thin;

I knocked and called, but no one came:

O, let me in!

In the mist and the rain I met you by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

In the mist and the rain I met you,
—Scarcely I saw your face.
The buffeting wind beset you,
—And robbed you of your grace.
——My arms went round thee,
——My love found thee
———A resting place.

Therefore the sun at morning
—Is not so dear.
I cherish the wild warning
—Of love, not fear,
——That comes with rain crying
——And wind sighing,
———“She is here!”

On A Heath by Thomas Hardy

 

I could hear a gown-skirt rustling

Before I could see her shape,

Rustling through the heather

That wove the common’s drape,

On that evening of dark weather

When I hearkened, lips agape.
And the town-shine in the distance

Did but baffle here the sight,

And then a voice flew forward:

“Dear, is’t you? I fear the night!”

And the herons flapped to norward

In the firs upon my right.
There was another looming

Whose life we did not see’

There was one stilly blooming

Full nigh to where walked we ;

There was a shade entombing

All that was bright of me.

So ghostly then the Girl Came In by Robert Hillyer

So ghostly then the girl came in
I never saw the turnstile twist
Down where the orchard trees begin
Lost in a reverie of mist.

And in the windless hour between
The last of daylight and the night,
When fields give up their ebbing green
And two bats interweave their flight,

I saw the turnstile glimmer pale
Just where the orchard trees begin,
But watching was of no avail,
Invisibly the girl came in.

I took one deep breath of the air
And lifted up my heavy heart;
It was not I who trembled there
But my immortal counterpart.

i knew that she had come again
Up from the orchard through the stile,
Without a sigh to tell me when,
Though I was watching all the while.

After a Journey by Thomas Hardy

 

Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost;

Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?

Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,

And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me.

Where you will next be there’s no knowing,

Facing round about me everywhere,

With your nut-coloured hair,

And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.
Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;

Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;

What have you now found to say of our past—

Scanned across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?

Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?

Things were not lastly as firstly well

With us twain, you tell?

But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.
I see what you are doing: you are leading me on

To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,

The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone

At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,

And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow

That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,

When you were all aglow,

And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!
Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,

The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily;

Soon you have, Dear, to vanish from me,

For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.

Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,

The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!

I am just the same as when

Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

Her Haunting-Ground by Thomas Hardy

Can it be so? It must be so,
That visions have not ceased to be
In this the chiefest sanctuary
Of her whose form we used to know.
– Nay, but her dust is far away,
And “where her dust is, shapes her shade,
If spirit clings to flesh,” they say:
Yet here her life-parts most were played!

Her voice explored this atmosphere,
Her foot impressed this turf around,
Her shadow swept this slope and mound,
Her fingers fondled blossoms here;
And so, I ask, why, why should she
Haunt elsewhere, by a slighted tomb,
When here she flourished sorrow-free,
And, save for others, knew no gloom?