Poetry of the Supernatural Part 6

=Seeger=, Alan. Broceliande. (In his Poems. 1917.)

Untroubled, untouched by the woes of this world are the moon-marshalled hosts that invade Broceliande.

=Shorter=, Dora Sigerson. All Souls' Night. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)

... Deelis.h.!.+ Deelis.h.!.+ My woe forever that I could not sever coward flesh from fear.

I called his name and the pale ghost came; but I was afraid to meet my dear.

=Sterling=, George. A Wine of Wizardry. (In A Wine of Wizardry and Other Poems. 1909.)

And, ere the tomb-thrown mutterings have ceased, The blue-eyed vampire, sated at her feast, Smiles bloodily against the leprous moon.

=Widdemer=, Margaret. The Forgotten Soul. (In her The Factories.)

'Twas I that stood to greet you on the churchyard pave-- (O fire o' my heart's grief, how could you never see?) You smiled in pleasant dreaming as you crossed my grave And crooned a little love-song where they buried me!

---- The House of Ghosts.

Out from the House of Ghosts I fled Lest I should turn and see The child I had been lift her head And stare aghast at me.

=Yeats=, William Butler. The Ballad of Father Gilligan. (In Burton Stevenson's The Home Book of Verse.)

How an angel obligingly took upon itself the form and performed the duties of Father Gilligan while the father was asleep at his post.

---- The Host of the Air.

Based upon a sc.r.a.p of folklore in "The Celtic Twilight" and apparently among the simplest of his poems, nothing he has ever done shows a greater mastery of atmosphere, or a greater metrical mastery.--_Forrest Reid._

He heard, while he sang and dreamed, A piper piping away, And never was piping so sad, And never was piping so gay.

THE OLD BALLADS

"_From Ghaisties, Ghoulies, and long-leggity Beasties and Things that go b.u.mp in the night-- Good Lord, deliver us._"

The ballads that follow have all been selected from The Oxford Book of Ballads, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1910.

Alison Gross.

She's turned me into an ugly worm And gar'd me toddle about the tree.

Clerk Saunders.

The most notable of the ballads of the supernatural, from the dramatic quality of its story and a certain wild pathos in its expression.

"Is there ony room at your head, Saunders, Is there ony room at your feet?

Or ony room at your side, Saunders, Where fain, fain I wad sleep?"

The Daemon Lover.

And aye as she turned her round about, Aye taller he seemed to be; Until that the tops o' that gallant s.h.i.+p Nae taller were than he.

King Henry.

O he has doen him to his ha'

To make him bierly cheer, An' in it came a griesly ghost Steed stappin' i' the fleer.

The Laily Worm.

For she has made me the laily worm, That lies at the fit o' the tree, And my sister Masery she's made The machrel of the sea.

A Lyke-wake Dirge.

This ae nighte, this ae nighte, --Every nighte and alle, Fire and sleet and candle-lighte, And Christ receive thy saule.

Tam Lin.

And pleasant is the fairy land For those that in it dwell, But ay at end of seven years They pay a teind to h.e.l.l; I am sae fair and fu' of flesh I'm fear'd 'twill be mysell.