Poetry of the Supernatural Part 5

=Gibson=, Wilfrid Wilson. The Blind Rower. (In his Collected Poems. 1917.)

Some say they saw the dead man steer-- The dead man steer the blind man home-- Though, when they found him dead, His hand was cold as lead.

---- Comrades.

As I was marching in Flanders A ghost kept step with me-- Kept step with me and chuckled, And muttered ceaselessly.

---- The Lodging House.

And when at last I stand outside My garret door I hardly dare To open it, Lest when I fling it wide With candle lit And reading in my only chair I find myself already there.

=Hagedorn=, Hermann. The Last Faring. (In Poems and Ballads.)

THE FATHER

Into the storm he drives! Full is the sail; But the wind blows wilder and shriller!

THE SON

'Tis the ghost of a Sea-King, my father, rigid and pale, That holds so firm the tiller!

---- The Cobbler of Glamorgan.

He coughed, he turned; and crystal-eyed He stared, for the bolted door stood wide, And on the threshold, faint and grand, He saw the awful Gray Man stand.

His flesh was a thousand snails that crept, But his face was calm though his pulses leapt.

=Herford=, Oliver. Ye Knyghte-mare. (In The Bashful Earthquake.)

Ye log burns dimme, and eke more dimme, Loud groans each knyghtlie gueste, As ye ghost of his grandmother, gaunt and grimme, Sits on each knyghte hys cheste.

=Kilmer=, Joyce. The White s.h.i.+ps and the Red. (In W. S. Braithwaite's Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915.)

The red s.h.i.+p is the Lusitania. "She goes to the bottom all in red to join all the other dead s.h.i.+ps, which are in white."

=Le Gallienne=, Richard. Ballad of the Dead Lover. (In his New Poems.

1910.)

She took his head upon her knee And called him love and very fair.

And with a golden comb she combed The grave-dust from his hair.

=Lowell=, Amy. The Crossroads. (In her Men, Women, and Ghosts.)

In polyphonic prose. The body buried at the crossroads struggles for twenty years to free itself of the stake driven through its heart and wreak vengeance on its enemy. It is finally successful as the funeral cortege of this enemy comes down the road.

"He wavers like smoke in the buffeting wind. His fingers blow out like smoke, his head ripples in the gale. Under the sign post, in the pouring rain, he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it..."

=Marquis=, Don. Haunted. (In his Dreams and Dust.)

Drink and forget, make merry and boast, But the boast rings false and the jest is thin.

In the hour that I meet ye ghost to ghost, Stripped of the flesh that ye skulk within, Stripped to the coward soul 'ware of its sin, Ye shall learn, ye shall learn, whether dead men hate!

=Masefield=, John. Cape Horn Gospel. (In his Collected Poems. 1918.)

"I'm a-weary of them there mermaids,"

Says old Bill's ghost to me, "It ain't no place for Christians, Below there, under sea.

For it's all blown sands and s.h.i.+pwrecks And old bones eaten bare, And them cold fishy females With long green weeds for hair."

---- Mother Carey.

She lives upon an iceberg to the norred 'N' her man is Davy Jones, 'N' she combs the weeds upon her forred With poor drowned sailors' bones.

=Maynard=, Winifred. Saint Catherine. (In The Book of Winifred Maynard.)

... "Saint Catherine," in which the spotless virginity of the saint is made ashamed by the pitiful ghosts, who whisper their humanity to her in a dream.--_William Stanley Braithwaite._

=Middleton=, Jesse Edgar. Off Heligoland. (In his Seadogs and Men-at-arms.)

Ghostly s.h.i.+ps in a ghostly sea...

=Millay=, Edna St. Vincent. The Little Ghost. (In her Renascence.)

I knew her for a little ghost That in my garden walked; The wall is high--higher than most-- And the green gate was locked.

=Monroe=, Harriet. The Legend of Pa.s.s Christian. (In her You and I.)

Now we, who wait one night a year Under these branches long, May see a flaming s.h.i.+p, and hear The echo of a song.

=Noyes=, Alfred. The Admiral's Ghost. (In his Collected Poems. 1913.)

---- A Song of Sherwood.

The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

=Scollard=, Clinton. A Ballad of Hallowma.s.s. (In his Ballads Patriotic and Romantic.)

It happed at the time of Hallowma.s.s, when the dead may walk abroad, That the wraith of Ralph of the Peaceful Heart went forth from the courts of G.o.d.