Believe it not, ye Yankees wise,
There are ghosts in being yet,
Spirits in earth and in the skies,
In the dry time and the wet—
White and black, and purple and blue,
Ghosts of every size and hue,
That ever a man hath met.
And oft when the sagest lessons fail,
And our gravest sermons are vain,
Their terror will make the sinner quail,
And take to the right again—
A hizz in the leaves, “a rat I’ the arras,”
Will awaken thoughts enough to scare us
Into the church’s pale.
Now groggy Sned was afeard of ghosts,
(Though spirits he loved too well,)
And he had seen them flock in hosts
In that delirium fell
When the very air laughed out and spoke,
And imps clung round him thick as smoke,
And pitchy black as hell.
It was on a dull November eve
When the fog was frorne in air,
And all the leaves had taken their leave—
For the dense Hemloc was rare—
Seemed earth to rue its bruited ruin,
For lo, on high the storms were brewin’,
And the barrenless hills were bare.
It was in such hour as goblins ride
To hint dark things to men,
Grave thoughts the grave, and suicide
Awakening in the brain,
When groggy Sned left Benny’s store,
Though a landman, more than half seas o’er
And helmless, in the main.
Strange fancies thronged his mind and lent
An evident hue of wonder
To all things that around him went,
Clouds o'er him and brown earth under:
There was something surely he had lost,
For to and fro the way he crost —
And his feet strayed far asunder.
Perhaps it was his wits, perhaps
His manhood or his money,
Or the conscience that no longer raps
When the poor heart waxes stoney-
But these were cruelly stolen a way
And his life, like that November day,
It was neither glad nor sunny.
Ah now, what demon approaches him!
He has started wild with fear;
See, in the fog air, huge and dim,
What awful thing comes near!
A cloven foot? or was it a shoe,
Whose ruined sole the toes come through?
Did a tail, or tatters appear?
"Is it the de—l? I wonder whether —
O heavens, that it were day!
Ha! saw I not the red cock's feather?
I fear me there's ill to pay!
He thought it, he felt it, he knew the omen
But he spoke not, for he heard in coming
The leathern bat-wings play!
Aghast! aghast! he stood at last
For the monster grew more ramping —
He saw its thin black lip move fast,
And heard the twin-hoof stamping!
The upper jaw flew with pit-a-pat,
Like the windy top of a loafer’s hat,
And the jagged teeth were champing
O Sned, what a sight was that to see,
For a man with sin-piled back!
Sned ran — it ran —faint waxed he!
And slow — and it grew slack!
He stopped — it stopped ! He started — it started!
Ah, never more can Sned be parted
From the foul fiend on his track!
"Lord forgive me!" “O Jesu Maria!”
"Now I lay me down to sleep!”
"In Adam's fall!'”—but in vain did he try a
Word that his memory could not keep—
Some prayer or hymn, or magic verse,
Taught in his childhood by his nurse
To fright the de'il to his deep.
Despair, despair, glowered every where!
And his tremulous breath throb'd quicker:
He swore if his life It would only spare,
He would never more drink liquor.
But at every turn be saw it still,
The haunting fend of his deathless ill—
And his sickened hope grew sicker.
Despair, despair, glowered every where,
And he sat him down to die!
Big sweat drops in his tangled hair,
And a tear in either eye!
He scarce need raise his look to know,
For he felt his foe by the warmer glow
Of his flesh, as it drew nigh!
He felt a tingle along each vein,
As if his blood were spiders,
Crawling and crawling — and his brain
Boiled with its fevered i-deas!
(Remember this verve is not a standard
Of sound when the rhymes come unwillingly and hard,)
And he heard a voice that cried thus —
"Hey, feller! I guess that you ar'nt use-to
Seeing o' chaps go by this way;
I want to sell you this ere red Rooster —
Prime fighter—what'll ye pay?"
"Pshaw! is it you, Bill?—faith, I'm glad!
But I'll keep my oath for the shame I've had."
And he drank not from that day.
George Shepard Burleigh
A Ghost Story