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Poetry of the Supernatural
Compiled by Earle F. Walbridge
The New York
Public Library
1919
REPRINTED JUNE 1919
FROM THE
BRANCH LIBRARY NEWS OF MAY 1919
PRINTED AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
form p-099 [vi-23-19 5m]
POETRY OF THE SUPERNATURAL[3:1]
Lafcadio Hearn, in his Interpretations of Literature (one of the most valuable and delightful books on literature which has been written in our time), says: "Let me tell you that it would be a mistake to suppose that the stories of the supernatural have had their day in fine literature. On the contrary, wherever fine literature is being produced, either in poetry or in prose, you will find the supernatural element very much alive. . . But without citing other living writers, let me observe that there is scarcely any really great author in European literature, old or new, who has not distinguished himself in the treatment of the supernatural. In English literature, I believe, there is no exception,—even from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the consideration of a general and remarkable fact,—a fact that I do not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great philosophical importance; there is something ghostly in all great art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture."
Feeling this, Mr. Walbridge has compiled the following list. It is not a bibliography, nor even a "contribution toward" a bibliography, nor a "reading list," in the usual sense, but the intelligent selection of a number of instances in which poets, major and minor, have turned to ghostly themes. If it causes you, reading one of its quotations, to hunt for and read the whole poem, it will have served its purpose. If it tells you of a poem you have never read—and so gives you a new pleasure—or if it reminds you of one you had forgotten, it will have been sufficiently useful. But for those who are fond of poetry, and fond of recollecting poems which they have enjoyed, it is believed that the list is not without interest in itself. Its quotations are taken from the whole great range of English poetry, both before and after the time of him "who made Prospero the magician, and gave him Caliban and Ariel as his servants, who heard the Tritons blowing their horns round the coral reefs of the Enchanted Isle, and the fairies singing to each other in a wood near Athens, who led the phantom kings in dim procession across the misty Scottish heath, and hid Hecate in a cave with the weird sisters."
FOOTNOTES:
[3:1] The picture on the front cover is from an illustration by Mr. Gerald Metcalfe, for Coleridge's "Christabel," in The Poems of Coleridge, published by John Lane.
POETRY OF THE SUPERNATURAL
Compiled by Earle F. Walbridge
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
—Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
THE OLDER POETS
Allingham, William. A Dream. (In Charles Welsh's The Golden Treasury of Irish Songs and Lyrics.)
I went to the window to see the sight:
All the dead that ever I knew
Going one by one and two by two.
Arnold, Matthew. The Forsaken Merman.
In its delicate loveliness "The Forsaken Merman" ranks high among Mr. Arnold's poems. It is the story of a Sea-King, married to a mortal maiden, who forsook him and her children under the impulse of a Christian conviction that she must return and pray for her soul.—H. W. Paul.
"Margaret, hist! Come quick, we are here!
Dear heart," I said, "We are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book.
—— St. Brandan.
. . . a picturesque embodiment of a strange mediaeval legend touching Judas Iscariot, who is supposed to be released from Hell for a few hours every Christmas because he had done in his life a single deed of charity.—H. W. Paul.
Barlow, Jane. Three Throws and One. (In Walter Jerrold's The Book of Living Poets.)
At each throw of my net it comes laden, O rare, with my wish back to me.
With my choice of all treasures most peerless that lapt in the oceans be.
Boyd, Thomas. The King's Son. (In Padric Gregory's Modern Anglo-Irish Verse.)
At such a headlong speed?
Naked and pale he rides amain,
Upon a naked steed.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Lay of the Brown Rosary.
Who meet by that wall, never looking at heaven?
O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary
And a face turned from heaven?
Browning, Robert. Mesmerism.
And the house-beams groan
And a foot unknown
Is surmised on the garret stairs
And the locks slip unawares. . .
Buchanan, Robert. The Ballad of Judas Iscariot. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)
The beauty is chiefly in the central idea of forgiveness, but the workmanship of this composition has also a very remarkable beauty, a Celtic beauty of weirdness, such as we seldom find in a modern composition touching religious tradition.—Lafcadio Hearn.
Lay stretched along the snow.
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Ran swiftly to and fro.
Carleton, William. Sir Turlough, or The Churchyard Bride. (In Stopford Brooke's A Treasury of Irish Poetry.)
The churchyard bride is accustomed to appear to the last mourner in the churchyard after a burial, and, changing its sex to suit the occasion, exacts a promise and a fatal kiss from the unfortunate lingerer.
Killeevy, O Killeevy!
And his banshee's wail—now far and broken—
Murmured "Death" as he gave the token
By the bonny green woods of Killeevy.
Chatterton, Thomas. The Parliament of Sprites.
"The Parliament of Sprites" is an interlude played by Carmelite friars at William Canynge's house on the occasion of the dedication of St. Mary Redcliffe's. One after another the "antichi spiriti dolenti" rise up and salute the new edifice: Nimrod and the Assyrians, Anglo-Saxon ealdormen and Norman knights templars, and citizens of ancient Bristol.—H. A. Beers.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Christabel.
The thing attempted in "Christabel" is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of romance—witchery by daylight—and the success is complete.—John Gibson Lockhart.
—— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
Cortissoz, Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. On Kingston Bridge. (In Stedman's American Anthology.)
The quick and dead together walked,
The quick and dead together talked,
On Kingston bridge.
Crawford, Isabella Valancy. The Mother's Soul. (In John Garvin's Canadian Poets and Poetry.)
Another elaborate variation on the theme of the return of a mother from her grave to rescue her children. Miss Crawford's mother does not go as far as the ghost in Robert Buchanan's "Dead Mother," who not only makes three trips to assemble her neglected family, but manages to appear to their delinquent father, to his great discomfort and the permanent loss of his sleep.
Dobell, Sydney. The Ballad of Keith of Ravelston. (In The Oxford Book of English Verse.)
A ballad unsurpassed in our literature for its weird suggestiveness.—Richard Garnett.
She keeps her shadowy kine;
O, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!
Drummond, William Henry. The Last Portage. (In Wilfred Campbell's The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse.)
I'm seein' de face of my boy is dead.
Eaton, Arthur Wentworth Hamilton. The Phantom Light of the Baie des Chaleurs. (In T. H. Rand's A Treasury of Canadian Verse.)
But many a night the black flag flew
From the mast of a spectre vessel sailed
By a spectre band that wept and wailed
For the wreck they had wrought on the sea, on the land,
For the innocent blood they had spilt on the sand
Of the Baie des Chaleurs.
Field, Eugene. The Peter-bird. (In his Songs and Other Verse.)
When, with his laughter and scorn, hatless and bootless and sockless,
Clothed in his jeans and his pride, Peter sailed out in the weather,
Broke from the warmth of his home into that fog of the devil,
Into the smoke of that witch brewing her damnable porridge!
Freneau, Philip. The Indian Burying-ground. (In Stedman's American Anthology.)
In habit for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer—a shade.
Graves, Alfred Perceval. The Song of the Ghost. (In Padric Gregory's Modern Anglo-Irish Verse.)
Or he'll be going to join the dead;
O cease from calling his ghost to the mould
And I'll come crowning your combs with gold.
Guiney, Louise Imogen. Peter Rugg, the Bostonian. (In Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature, v. 41.)
The rain will follow loud,
And he who meets that ghostly man
Will meet a thunder-cloud.
And whosoever speaks with him
May next bespeak his shroud.
Harte, Francis Bret. A Greyport Legend.
Still another phantom ship, a treacherous hulk that broke from its moorings and drifted with a crew of children into the fog.
Hawker, Robert Stephen. Mawgan of Melhuach. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)
With a stormy pang old Mawgan past,
And away, away, beneath their sight,
Gleam'd the
Hawthorne, Julian. Were-wolf. (In Stedman's American Anthology.)
Grinning in horrible glee.
The wolves that follow with scurrying feet
Sniffing that goblin scent, at once
Scatter in terror, while it slips
Away, to the shore of the frozen sea.
Herrick, Robert. The Hag.
This night for to ride,
The Devil and she together.
Through thick, and through thin,
Now out, and then in,
Though ne'er so foul be the weather.
Hood, Thomas. The Haunted House.
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
"The place is Haunted!"
Houghton, George. The Handsel Ring. (In Stedman's American Anthology.)
A man and maid are plighting their troth in the tomb of an old knight, the girl's father, when the man lucklessly drops the ring through a crack in the floor of the tomb.
For a little thing!"
"Nay! but behold what broodeth there!
See the cold sheen of his silvery hair!
Look how his eyeballs roll and stare,
Seeking thy handsel ring!"
Hugo, Victor. The Djinns. (In Charles A. Dana's The Household Book of Poetry.)
Shut tight the shelter where we lie!
With hideous din the monster rout,
Dragon and vampire, fill the sky!
Joyce, Patrick Weston. The Old Hermit's Story. (In Padric Gregory's Modern Anglo-Irish Verse.)
And I saw, as I viewed the sea,
A withered old man upon a wave,
And he fixed his eyes on me.
Keats, John. La Belle Dame sans Merci.
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd—-"La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall."
—— Lamia.
Than with a frightful scream she vanished:
And Lycius' arms were empty of delight,
As were his limbs of life, from that same night.
Kingsley, Charles. The Weird Lady.
Like motes in the sunnès beam;
And over him stood the Weird Lady
In her charmèd castle over the sea,
Sang "Lie thou still and dream."
Leconte de Lisle, Charles. Les Elfes. (In The Oxford Book of French Verse.)
Je vais épouser ma belle aux doux yeux.
—O mon cher époux, la tombe éternelle
Sera notre lit de noce, dit-elle.
Je suis morte!—Et lui, la voyant ainsi,
D'angoisse et d'amour tombe mort aussi.
Lockhart, Arthur John. The Waters of Carr. (In T. H. Rand's A Treasury of Canadian Verse.)
Fairy stolen; changed a fay;
And still I hear her calling, calling, calling,
In the mossy woods of Carr!
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Ballad of Carmilhan.
The ghostly Carmilhan!
Her masts were stripped, her yards were bare,
And on her bowsprit, poised in air,
Sat the Klaboterman.
Macdonald, George. Janet. (In Linton and Stoddard's Ballads and Romances.)
A glintin' down the sky;
And the souls crept out of their mouldy graves
A' dank wi' lying by.
McKay, Charles. The Kelpie of Corrievreckan. (In Dugald Mitchell's The Book of Highland Verse.)
The Kelpie gallops across the green
On a steed as fleet as the wintry wind,
With Jessie's mournful ghost behind.
Mackenzie, Donald A. The Banshee. (In The Book of Highland Verse.)
She beetled on a stone,
She stood with dripping hands, blood-red,
Low singing all alone—
"His linen robes are pure and white,
For Fergus More must die tonight."
Mallet, David. William and Margaret. (In W. M. Dixon's The Edinburgh Book of Scottish Verse.)
The winding sheet I wear.
And cold and weary lasts our night,
Till that last morn appear.
Moore, Thomas. The Lake of the Dismal Swamp.
For a soul so warm and true;
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp
Where all night long, by a firefly lamp,
She paddles her birch canoe.
Morris, William. The Tune of Seven Towers.
Except in the white
The white ghosts walk in a row,
If one could see it, an awful sight.
"Listen!" said Fair Yolande of the flowers,
"This is the tune of Seven Towers."
Österling, Anders. Meeting of Phantoms. (In Charles Wharton Stork's Anthology of Swedish Lyrics from 1750 to 1915.)
Saw my lost sweetheart,
Fearlessly toward me
I saw her stray.
So pale! I thought then;
She smiled her answer:
"My heart, my spirit,
I've kissed away."
O'Sullivan, Vincent. He Came on Holy Saturday. (In Padric Gregory's Modern Anglo-Irish Verse.)
The weary ghost came back,
And laid his hand upon my brow,
And whispered me, "Alack!
There sits no angel by the tomb,
The Sepulchre is black."
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Conqueror Worm.
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
—— Ulalume.
But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of that legended tomb?"
She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume."
Rossetti, Christina.
She never doubts but she always wonders. Again and again in imagination she crosses the bridge of death and explores the farther shore. Her ghosts come back with familiar forms, familiar sensations, and familiar words.—Elisabeth Luther Cary.
—— A Chilly Night.
Dotting plain and mound.
They stood in the blank moonlight
But no shadow lay on the ground.
They spoke without a voice
And they leaped without a sound.
—— Goblin Market.
Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men.
We must not buy their fruits;
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Eden Bower.
(Eden Bower's in flower)
Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman.
—— Sister Helen.
Its forty-two short verses unfold the whole story of the wronged woman's ruthless vengeance on her false lover as she watches the melting of the "waxen man" which, according to the old superstitions, is to carry with it the destruction, body and soul, of him in whose likeness it was fashioned.—H. R. Fox-Bourne.
Sister Helen?
Ah! What is this that sighs in the frost?"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)
Scott, Sir Walter. Child Dyring.
Their mither she under the mools heard that.
—— The Dance of Death.
A vision appearing to a Scottish sentinel on the eve of Waterloo.
'Twixt Britain and the bands of France
Wild as marsh-borne meteor's glance,
Strange phantoms wheeled a revel dance
And doom'd the future slain.
Scott, William Bell. The Witch's Ballad. (In The Oxford book of English verse.)
Into the mist and off my feet,
And, dancing on each chimney top
I saw a thousand darling imps
Keeping time with skip and hop.
Shairp, John Campbell. Cailleach bein-y-vreich. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)
And laugh as we stride the storm,
I, and the witch of the Cruachan Ben
And the scowling-eyed Seul-Gorm.
Shanly, C. D. The Walker of the Snow. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)
As I followed, bending low,
That the walking of the stranger
Left no footmarks on the snow.
Sharp, William. ("Fiona McLeod.") Cap'n Goldsack.
Where among the dead men the sharks flit to and fro—
There Cap'n Goldsack goes creeping, creeping, creeping,
Looking for his treasure down below.
Southey, Robert. The Old Woman of Berkeley.
The fiends have been my slaves.
From sleeping babes I have sucked the breath,
And breaking by charms the sleep of death,
I have call'd the dead from their graves.
And the Devil will fetch me now in fire
My witchcrafts to atone;
And I who have troubled the dead man's grave
Will never have rest in my
Stephens, Riccardo. The Phantom Piper. (In The Book of Highland Verse.)
Right down the road to Hell he goes.
There the gaunt porters all agrin
Fling back the gates to let him in,
Then damned and devil, one and all,
Make mirth and hold high carnival.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles. After Death. (In Poems and Ballads, First Series.)
Heard all the dead man did.
Made of grave's mould and deadly drouth.
Taylor, William. Lenore.
The most successful rendering of Bürger's much-translated "Lenore," and the direct inspiration of Scott's "William and Helen."
Splash, splash across the sea:
"Hurrah! The dead can ride apace.
Dost fear to ride with me?"
Watson, Rosamund Marriott-. The Farm on the Links. (In The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.)
What comes apace on those fearful, stealthy feet?
Back from the chill sea-deeps, gliding o'er the sand dunes,
Home to the old home, once again to meet?
Whittier, John Greenleaf. The Dead Ship of Harpswell.
Upon thy helm no hand,
No ripple hath the soundless wind
That smites thee from the land.
—— The Old Wife and the New.
And that ice-cold hand withdrawn;
But she hears a murmur low,
Full of sweetness, full of woe,
Half a sigh and half a moan:
"Fear not! Give the dead her own."
THE YOUNGER POETS
It needs not my turning, I know otherwise:
The air is a-quiver with rustle of wings
And I feel the cold shiver of spiritual things!
—"Instinct and Reason" from "The Book of Winifred Maynard."
Benét, William Rose. Devil's Blood. (Second Film in "Films," in "The Burglar of the Zodiac.")
Is it but shadow?—steals a thread of wrath,
A red bright thread. It reaches him. He reels.
Wet! Warm! Wily athwart his step it steals
And stains his white court footgear, toes to heels.
Brooke, Rupert. Dead Men's Love. (In his Collected Poems. 1918.)
There was a Woman like the sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.
They did not know their time was done.
—— Hauntings.
Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams.
Burnet, Dana. Ballad of the Late John Flint. (In his Poems. 1915.)
"The wine is strong," he said.
The Bride she twirled her wedding ring
Nor lifted up her head;
And there were three at John Flint's board,
And one of them was dead.
Campbell, William Wilfred. The Mother. (In John W. Garvin's Canadian Poets and Poetry.)
Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring!
. . . . . . . .
I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast,
And stole me back to my long, long rest.
—— The Were-wolves. (In Stedman's Victorian Anthology.)
Is a demon-haunted soul,
The shadowy, phantom were-wolves
That circle round the pole.
Carman, Bliss. The Nancy's Pride. (In his Ballads of Lost Haven.)
With the Judgment in their face;
And to their mates' "God save you!"
Have never a word of grace.
—— The Yule Guest. (In Ballads of Lost Haven.)
Up from the round dim sea
And reeling dungeons of the fog,
I am come back to thee!
Chalmers, Patrick R. The Little Ghost. (In his Green Days and Blue Days.)
With heaven-scented, haunting mignonette,
The gardeners say
A little grey
Ghost-lady walks!
Colum, Padraic. The Ballad of Downal Baun. (In Wild Earth and Other Poems.)
She stood where the willows grew,
A woman from the country
Where the cocks never crew.
Couch, Arthur Quiller-. Dolor Oogo. (In John Masefield's A Sailor's Garland.)
Dolor Oogo, Dolor Oogo,
Drownèd men since 'eighty-four
Down in Dolor Oogo:
On the cliff against the sky,
Ailsa, wife of
That cold woman—
Sits and knits eternally.
De La Mare, Walter. The Keys of Morning. (In his The Listeners.)
Across the empty street
And saw Death softly watching her
In the sunshine pale and sweet.
—— The Listeners.
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
—— The Witch.