Halloween Collection IV

Theme in Yellow

by Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

Copyright Credit: Carl Sandburg, "Theme in Yellow"

from Chicago Poems (New York: Henry Holt

and Company, 1916). Public domain.

Some One

by Walter de la Mare

Some one came knocking

At my wee, small door;

Some one came knocking,

I’m sure—sure—sure;

I listened, I opened,

I looked to left and right,

But nought there was a-stirring

In the still dark night;

Only the busy beetle

Tap-tapping on the wall,

Only from the forest

The screech-owl’s call,

Only the cricket whistling

While the dewdrops fall,

So I know not who came knocking,

At all, at all, at all.

All Hallows

by Louise Glück

Even now this landscape is assembling.

The hills darken. The oxen

sleep in their blue yoke,

the fields having been

picked clean, the sheaves

bound evenly and piled at the roadside

among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness

of harvest or pestilence.

And the wife leaning out the window

with her hand extended, as in payment,

and the seeds

distinct, gold, calling

Come here

Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I

[Round about the cauldron go]

by William Shakespeare

The three witches, casting a spell

Round about the cauldron go;   

In the poison’d entrails throw.   

Toad, that under cold stone    

Days and nights hast thirty one   

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,   

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.   

     Double, double toil and trouble; 

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.   

Fillet of a fenny snake,   

In the cauldron boil and bake;   

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,   

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,   

Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,   

Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,   

For a charm of powerful trouble, 

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.   

     Double, double toil and trouble;   

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,      

Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf     

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,     

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,     

Liver of blaspheming Jew,      

Gall of goat, and slips of yew     

Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,     

Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,     

Finger of birth-strangled babe      

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,     

Make the gruel thick and slab:     

Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,     

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

     Double, double toil and trouble;   

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Mr. Macklin’s Jack O’Lantern

by David McCord

Mr. Macklin takes his knife 

And carves the yellow pumpkin face: 

Three holes bring eyes and nose to life, 

The mouth has thirteen teeth in place. 

Then Mr. Macklin just for fun 

Transfers the corn-cob pipe from his 

Wry mouth to Jack’s, and everyone 

Dies laughing! O what fun it is 

Till Mr. Macklin draws the shade 

And lights the candle in Jack’s skull.

Then all the inside dark is made 

As spooky and as horrorful 

As Halloween, and creepy crawl 

The shadows on the tool-house floor, 

With Jack’s face dancing on the wall. 

O Mr. Macklin! where's the door?

Dusk in Autumn

by Sara Teasdale

The moon is like a scimitar,

A little silver scimitar,

A-drifting down the sky.

And near beside it is a star,

A timid twinkling golden star,

That watches like an eye.

 

And thro’ the nursery window-pane

The witches have a fire again,

Just like the ones we make,—

And now I know they’re having tea,

I wish they’d give a cup to me,

With witches’ currant cake.

The Haunted House

by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

I seem like one

Who treads alone

   Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

   And all but me departed.

           —Thomas Moore, “Oft in the Stilly Night (Scotch Air)”

See’st thou yon gray gleaming hall,

Where the deep elm-shadows fall?

Voices that have left the earth

     Long ago,

Still are murmuring round its hearth,

     Soft and low:

Ever there;—yet one alone

Hath the gift to hear their tone.

Guests come thither, and depart,

Free of step, and light of heart;

Children, with sweet visions blessed,

In the haunted chambers rest;

One alone unslumbering lies

When the night hath sealed all eyes,

One quick heart and watchful ear,

Listening for those whispers clear.

 

See’st thou where the woodbine-flowers

O’er yon low porch hang in showers?

Startling faces of the dead,

     Pale, yet sweet,

One lone woman’s entering tread

     There still meet!

Some with young, smooth foreheads fair,

Faintly shining through bright hair;

Some with reverend locks of snow—

All, all buried long ago!

All, from under deep sea-waves,

Or the flowers of foreign graves,

Or the old and bannered aisle,

Where their high tombs gleam the while;

Rising, wandering, floating by,

Suddenly and silently,

Through their earthly home and place,

But amidst another race.

 

Wherefore, unto one alone,

Are those sounds and visions known?

Wherefore hath that spell of power

     Dark and dread,

On her soul, a baleful dower,

     Thus been shed?

Oh! in those deep-seeing eyes,

No strange gift of mystery lies!

She is lone where once she moved,

Fair, and happy, and beloved!

Sunny smiles were glancing round her,

Tendrils of kind hearts had bound her;

Now those silver chords are broken,

Those bright looks have left no token;

Not one trace on all the earth,

Save her memory of their mirth.

She is lone and lingering now,

Dreams have gathered o’er her brow,

Midst gay songs and children’s play,

She is dwelling far away;

Seeing what none else may see—

Haunted still her place must be!

Copyright Credit: Felicia Dorothea Hemans, “The Haunted House”

from National lyrics, and songs for music.  Dublin: William Curry Jr.

and Company; London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1834. Public domain.

All Hallows’ Eve

by Dorothea Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise.

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Hear bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise

You and the werewolf: newlyweds.

Copyright Credit: Dorothea Tanning, “All Hallows’ Eve”

from Coming to That. Copyright © 2011 by Dorothea Tanning.

Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.

Ghost Music

by Robert Graves

Gloomy and bare the organ-loft,

Bent-backed and blind the organist.

From rafters looming shadowy,

From the pipes’ tuneful company,

Drifted together drowsily,

Innumerable, formless, dim,

The ghosts of long-dead melodies,

Of anthems, stately, thunderous,

Of Kyries shrill and tremulous:

In melancholy drowsy-sweet

They huddled there in harmony.

Like bats at noontide rafter-hung.

Copyright © 2016 by Wayne Miller.

Originally published in Poem-a-Day

on October 15, 2016,

by the Academy of American Poets.

All Souls’ Night

by William Butler Yeats

Epilogue to "A Vision"

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room;

And it is All Souls’ Night.
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel

Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;

For it is a ghost’s right,

His element is so fine

Being sharpened by his death,

To drink from the wine-breath

While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind’s pondering,
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Horton’s the first I call. He loved strange thought

And knew that sweet extremity of pride

That’s called platonic love,

And that to such a pitch of passion wrought

Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,

Anodyne for his love.

Words were but wasted breath;

One dear hope had he:

The inclemency

Of that or the next winter would be death.

Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell

Whether of her or God he thought the most,

But think that his mind’s eye,

When upward turned, on one sole image fell;

And that a slight companionable ghost,

Wild with divinity,

Had so lit up the whole

Immense miraculous house

The Bible promised us,

It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

On Florence Emery I call the next,

Who finding the first wrinkles on a face

Admired and beautiful,

And by foreknowledge of the future vexed;

Diminished beauty, multiplied commonplace;

Preferred to teach a school

Away from neighbour or friend,

Among dark skins, and there

Permit foul years to wear

Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

Before that end much had she ravelled out

From a discourse in figurative speech

By some learned Indian

On the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about

Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,

Until it plunge into the sun;

And there, free and yet fast,

Being both Chance and Choice,

Forget its broken toys

And sink into its own delight at last.

I call MacGregor Mathers from his grave,

For in my first hard spring-time we were friends,

Although of late estranged.

I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,

And told him so, but friendship never ends;

And what if mind seem changed,

And it seem changed with the mind,

When thoughts rise up unbid

On generous things that he did

And I grow half contented to be blind!

He had much industry at setting out,

Much boisterous courage, before loneliness

Had driven him crazed;

For meditations upon unknown thought

Make human intercourse grow less and less;

They are neither paid nor praised.

But he’d object to the host,

The glass because my glass;

A ghost-lover he was

And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

But names are nothing. What matter who it be,

So that his elements have grown so fine

The fume of muscatel

Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy

No living man can drink from the whole wine.

I have mummy truths to tell

Whereat the living mock,

Though not for sober ear,

For maybe all that hear

Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Such thought—such thought have I that hold it tight

Till meditation master all its parts,

Nothing can stay my glance

Until that glance run in the world’s despite

To where the damned have howled away their hearts,

And where the blessed dance;

Such thought, that in it bound

I need no other thing,

Wound in mind’s wandering

As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

Copyright Credit: William Butler Yeats, “All Souls’ Night”

from Seven Poems and a Fragment.

Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1922. Public domain.

"Top 25 Scary Poems of All Time"

Gathered by Michael R. Burch

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Tom O'Bedlam's Song by Anonymous
A Lyke-Wake Dirge by Anonymous
The Raven, Ulalume, Alone and Lenore by Edgar Allan Poe
Ophélie (“Ophelia”) and Antico (“Ancient”) by Arthur Rimbaud
"Song of the Witches" from Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Bustle in a House and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats
The Broken Tower by Hart Crane
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Allayne by Kevin N. Roberts
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
A Last Word by Ernest Dowson
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
Luke Havergal and The Mill by Edward Arlington Robinson
The Unreturning by Wilfred Owen
Her Kind by Anne Sexton and Daddy by Sylvia Plath (a tie between friends)
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
The Vampire by Conrad Aiken
The Fisher by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Du by Janet Kenny
Part 6 from The Dark Side of the Deity: Interlude by Joe M. Ruggier
Haunted Houses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow