THE HAUNTED HOUR
An Anthology
COMPILED BY
MARGARET WIDDEMER
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
For the use of the copyrighted material included in this volume permission has been secured either from the author or his authorized publishers. All rights in these poems are reserved by the holders of the copyright, or the authorized publishers, as named below:
To George H. Doran Co. for the poems of Joyce Kilmer and May Byron.
To Doubleday, Page & Co. and Rudyard Kipling for Mr. Kipling's "The Looking-Glass."
To E. P. Dutton & Co. for Helen Gray Cone's "Blockhouse on the Hill," from her A Chant of Love for England.
To Harper & Bros. for the poems of Arthur Guiterman, Don Marquis, and Don C. Seitz.
To Henry Holt and Co. for the poems of Francis Carlin, Walter De La Mare, Louis Untermeyer, and Margaret Widdemer.
To Houghton Mifflin Co. for Anna Hempstead Branch's "Such Are the Souls in Purgatory" from Heart of the Road, the poems of Henry W. Longfellow, Nathan Haskell Dole's "Russian Fantasy," Amy Lowell's "Haunted" from Pictures of the Floating World, May Kendall's "A Legend."
To Mitchell Kennerley for the poems of Theodosia Garrison, Dora Sigerson Shorter, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
To John Lane Co. for the poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson, Winifred Letts, A. E. Housman's "True Lover," Nora Hopper's "Far Away Country," Marjorie Pickthall's "Mary Shepherdess."
To the Macmillan Co. for W. B. Yeats' "Folk o' the Air," and John Masefield's "Cape Horn Gospel."
To Thomas Bird Mosher for Edith M. Thomas's "The Passer-By" from Flower from the Ashes.
To Frederick A. Stokes Co. for "The Highwayman," by Alfred Noyes.
To Charles Scribner's Sons for Josephine Daskam Bacon's "Little Dead Child."
To Rose de Vaux Royer for Madison Cawein's "Ghosts."
To the Saturday Evening Post for Grantland Rice's "Ghosts of the Argonne."
I have to thank the following authors for express personal permission: Josephine Daskam Bacon, Anna Hempstead Branch, Francis Carlin, Helen Gray Cone, Nathan Haskell Dole, Theodosia Garrison, Arthur Guiterman, Minna Irving, Aline Kilmer, Katherine Tynan Hinkson, Winifred Letts, Amy Lowell, Don Marquis, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, Marjorie L. C. Pickthall, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Grantland Rice, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Haven Schauffler, Don C. Seitz, Clement Shorter (for Dora Sigerson Shorter), Edith M. Thomas, Louis Untermeyer, and William Butler Yeats.
PREFACE
This does not attempt to be an inclusive anthology. The ghostly poetry of the late war alone would have made a book as large as this; and an inclusive scheme would have ended as a six-volume Encyclopedia of Ghostly Verse. I hope that this may be called for some day. The present book has been held to the conventional limits of the type of small anthology which may be read without weariness (I hope) by the exclusion not only of many long and dreary ghost-poems, but many others which it was very hard to leave out.
I have not considered as ghost-poems anything but poems which related to the return of spirits to earth. Thus "The Blessed Damozel," a poem of spirits in heaven, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," whose heroine may be a fairy or witch, and whose ghosts are presented in dream only, do not belong in this classification; nor do such poems as Mathilde Blind's lovely sonnet, "The Dead Are Ever with Us," class as ghost-poems; for in these the dead are living in ourselves in a half-metaphorical sense. If a poem would be a ghost-story, in short, I have considered it a ghost-poem, not otherwise.
In this connection I wish to thank Mabel Cleland Ludlum for her unwearied and intelligent assistance with the selection and compilation of the book; and Aline Kilmer for help in its revision and arrangement.
Margaret Widdemer.
CONTENTS
The Far Away Country Nora Hopper Chesson xiv "THE NICHT ATWEEN THE SANCTS AN' SOULS" All-Souls Katherine Tynan 3 All-Saints' Eve Lizette Woodworth Reese 3 A Dream William Allingham 4 The Neighbors Theodosia Garrison 6 A Ballad of Hallowe'en Theodosia Garrison 7 The Forgotten Soul Margaret Widdemer 8 All-Souls' Night Dora Sigerson Shorter 9 Janet's Tryst George Macdonald 10 Hallows' E'en Winifred M. Letts 13 On Kingston Bridge Ellen M. H. Cortissoz 14 All-Souls' Night Louisa Humphreys 16THE HAUNTED HOUR
THE FAR AWAY COUNTRY
NORA HOPPER CHESSON
Far away's the country where the blue roses grow,
Far away's the country and very far away,
And who would travel thither must go 'twixt night and day.
That you must voyage over, grown man or chrisom child,
O'er leagues of land and water a weary way you'll go
Before you'll find the country where the blue roses grow.
You'd travel far to see them, and one might die to wear,
Yet, far away's the country, and perilous the sea,
And some may think far fairer the red rose on her tree.
Far away's the country—O would that I were there!
It's on and on past Whinny Muir and over Brig o' Dread.
And you shall pluck blue roses the day that you are dead.
"THE NICHT ATWEEN THE SANCTS AN' SOULS"
To-night, and many a one is fain
To go home for one night's watch
With his love again.
There's a drift of dead leaves at the door
Like pitter-patter of little feet
That come no more.
Their tears are heavier than the clay,
But who is this at the threshold
So young and gay?
They have forgotten how to weep;
Words of comfort on the tongue,
And a kiss to keep.
Kisses and comfort none shall lack;
At morn they steal forth with a smile
And a long look back.
Under the empty trees,
Here in my house I sit and cry,
My head upon my knees!
Like mist they fill the square;
The bolt is drawn, the latch made tight,
The shutter barréd there.
New to the churchyard clod;
My little lad, my little lad,
A single year with God!
Until they all are past,
Under the empty trees the dead
That go full soft and fast.
Back to my bed I plod;
Oh, would I were a ghost with him,
And faring back to God!
I went to the window to see the sight;
All the dead that ever I knew
Going one by one and two by two.
Townsfellows all, from first to last;
Born in the moonlight of the lane,
Quench'd in the heavy shadow again.
At soldiers once—but now more staid;
Those were the strangest sight to me
Who were drown'd, I knew, in the open sea.
Some that I loved, and gasp'd to speak to;
Some but a day in their churchyard bed;
Some that I had not known were dead.
Yet of them all there was one, one only,
Raised a head or looked my way;
She linger'd a moment—she might not stay.
Ah! Mother dear! might I only place
My head on thy breast, a moment to rest,
While thy hand on my tearful cheek were press'd!
Across the moon-stream, from shade to shade,
Young and old, women and men;
Many long-forgot, but remember'd then,
A sound of tears a moment after,
And then a music so lofty and gay,
That every morning, day by day,
I strive to recall it if I may.
The ghosts must go
Back to their quiet graves below.
I heard the crowing cock,
And I arose and threw the window wide;
Long, long before the setting of the moon,
And yet I knew they must be passing soon—
My neighbors who had died—
Back to their narrow green-roofed homes that wait
Beyond the churchyard gate.
Was like a thing impearled,
Mysterious and beautiful and still:
The crooked road seemed one the moon might lay,
Our little village slept in Quaker gray,
And gray and tall the poplars on the hill;
And then far off I heard the cock—and then
My neighbors passed again.
Slow drifting by my door,
Or gardened lilies swaying in the wind;
Then suddenly each separate face I knew,
The tender lovers drifting two and two,
Old, peaceful folk long since passed out of mind,
And little children—one whose hand held still
An earth-grown daffodil.
To lift a wistful face
Up to a certain window where there dreamed
A little brood left motherless; and there
One turned to where the unploughed fields lay bare;
And others lingering passed—but one there seemed
So over glad to haste, she scarce could wait
To reach the churchyard gate!
And died—I may not tell
How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old,
With backward glances lingered as they went;
Only upon one face was all content,
A sorrow comforted—a peace untold.
I watched them through the swinging gate—the dawn
Stayed till the last had gone.