The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

The haunted homes of England,
How eerily they stand,
While through them flit their ghosts—to wit,
The Monk with the Red Hand;
The Eyeless Girl—an awful spook—
To stop the boldest breath,
The boy that inked his copybook,
And so got ‘wopped’ to death!

Call them not shams—from haunted Glamis
To haunted Woodhouselea,
I mark in hosts the grisly ghosts
I hear the fell Banshie!
I know the spectral dog that howls
Before the death of squires;
In my ‘Ghosts'-guide’ addresses hide
For Podmore and for Myers!

I see the vampire climb the stairs
From vaults below the church;
And hark! the pirate's spectre swears!
O psychical research,
Canst thou not hear what meets my ear,
The viewless wheels that come?
The wild Banshie that wails to thee?
The Drummer with his drum?

O haunted homes of England,
Though tenantless ye stand,
With none content to pay the rent,
Through all the shadowy land,
Now, science true will find in you
A sympathetic perch,
And take you all, both grange and hall,
For psychical research!

Ghosts in the Library

Suppose, when now the house is dumb,
When lights are out, and ashes fall—
Suppose their ancient owners come
To claim our spoils of shop and stall;
Ah me! within the narrow hall
How strange a mob would meet and go,
What famous folk would haunt them all,
Octavo, quarto, folio!

The great Napoleon lays his hand
Upon this eagle-headed N,
That marks for his a pamphlet banned
By all but scandal-loving men—
A libel from some nameless den
Of Frankfort—Arnaud à la Sphère,
Wherein one spilt, with venal pen,
Lies o'er the loves of Molière.

Another shade—he does not see
‘Boney’, the foeman of his race—
The great Sir Walter, this is he
With that grave homely Border face.
He claims his poem of the chase
That rang Benvoirlich's valley through;
And this, that doth the lineage trace
And fortunes of the bold Buccleuch.

For these were his, and these he gave
To one who dwelt beside the Peel,
That murmurs with its tiny wave
To join the Tweed at Ashestiel.
Now thick as motes the shadows wheel,
And find their own, and claim a share
Of books wherein Ribou did deal,
Or Roulland sold to wise Colbert.

What famous folk of old are here!
A royal duke comes down to us,
And greatly wants his Elzevir,
His pagan tutor, Lucius.
And Beckford claims an amorous
Old heathen in morocco blue;
And who demands Eobanus
But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou!

They come—the wise, the great, the true—
They jostle on the narrow stair,
The joyous Countess de Verrue,
Lamoignon, ay, and Longepierre,
The new and elder dead are there—
The lords of speech, and song, and pen—
Gambetta, Schlegel, and the rare
Drummond of haunted Hawthornden.

Ah, and with those, a hundred more,
Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot:
Brave ‘Smiths’ and ‘Thompsons’ by the score,
Scrawled upon many a shabby ‘lot’.
This playbook was the joy of Pott—
Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves;
Our names, like his, remembered not,
Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves!

At least in pleasant company
We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit;
A man may turn a page, and sigh,
Seeing one's name, to think of it.
Beauty, or poet, sage, or wit,
May ope our book, and muse awhile,
And fall into a dreaming fit,
As now we dream, and wake, and smile!

100

Gainsborough Ghosts

In the Grosvenor Gallery

They smile upon the western wall—
The lips that laughed an age agone,
The fops, the dukes, the beauties all,
Le Brun that sang, and Carr that shone.
We gaze with idle eyes: we con
The faces of an elder time—
Alas! and ours is flitting on;
Oh, moral for an empty rhyme!

Think, when the tumult and the crowd
Have left the solemn rooms and chill,
When dilettanti are not loud,
When lady critics are not shrill—
Ah, think how strange upon the still
Dim air may sound these voices faint;
Once more may Johnson talk his fill
And fair Dalrymple charm the saint!

101

Of us they speak as we of them;
Like us, perchance, they criticize:
Our wit, they vote, is Brummagem;
Our beauty—dim to Devon's eyes!
Their silks and lace our cloth despise,
Their pumps—our boots that pad the mud,
What modern fop with Walpole vies?
With St. Leger what modern blood?

Ah true, we lack the charm, the wit,
Our very greatest, sure, are small;
And Mr. Gladstone is not Pitt,
And Garrick comes not when we call.
Yet—pass an age—and, after all,
Even we may please the folk that look
When we are faces on the wall,
And voices in a history book!

In art the statesman yet shall live,
With collars keen, with Roman nose;
To beauty yet shall Millais give
The roses that outlast the rose:
The lords of verse, the slaves of prose,
On canvas yet shall seem alive,
And charm the mob that comes and goes,
And lives—in 1985.

102

Ballade of a Choice of Ghosts

Now, which are you anxious to see—
A bogie, a sprite, or a gnome?
If a spectre should drop in to tea,
Would you like him to find us at home?
Or a mermaid with mirror and comb,
In her have you plenary faith?
Or a lemur of classical Rome,
Or a common respectable wraith?

Here's the vampire, or Bronkola Ki,
From his grave in old Greece hath he clomb;
But perhaps he might bite us, and we
Should be forced in his fashion to roam;
Or a ginn from a Mussulman dome—
He might work such unlimited scathe
That we'd all turn as yellow as chrome—
Or a common respectable wraith!

103

From the ghost of our youth would you flee
In his shroud that is dappled with loam?
Or a faithful ancestral banshie?
Or a martyr from some catacomb?
Or a wizard with magical tome
Whom his cerements becomingly swathe?
Or a wili as fair as the foam?
Or a common respectable wraith?

Envoy

Oh, the gloaming's beginning to gloam
And (if Scotch is allowed) I am ‘laith’
To encounter a bogie or gnome,
Or a common respectable wraith.

104

The Disappointment

A house I took, and many a spook
Was deemed to haunt that house,
I bade the glum Researchers come
With bogles to carouse.
That house I'd sought with anxious thought,
'Twas old—'twas dark as sin,
And deeds of bale, so ran the tale,
Had oft been done therein.

Full many a child its mother wild,
Men said, had strangled there;
Full many a sire, in heedless ire,
Had slain his daughter fair!
'Twas rarely let: I can't forget
A recent tenant's dread,
This widow lone had heard a moan
Proceeding from her bed.

105

The tenants next were chiefly vexed
By spectres grim and gray;
A headless ghost annoyed them most,
And so they did not stay.
The next in turn saw corpse lights burn,
And also a banshie,
A spectral hand they could not stand,
And left the house to me.

Then came my friends for divers ends,
Some curious, some afraid;
No direr pest disturbed their rest
Than a neat chambermaid.
The grisly halls were gay with balls,
One melancholy nook,
Where ghosts galore were seen before,
Now yielded ne'er a spook.

When man and maid, all unafraid,
‘Sat out’ upon the stairs,
No spectre dread, with feet of lead,
Came past them unawares.
I know not why, but alway I
Have found that it is so,
That when the glum Researchers come
The brutes of bogeys—go.

As a matter of fact the Haunted House Committee of the Society for Psychical Research have never succeeded in seeing a ghost.—A. L.

106

The Haunted Tower

Suggested by a Poem of Théophile Gautier

In front he saw the donjon tall
Deep in the woods, and stayed to scan
The guards that slept along the wall,
Or dozed upon the bartizan.
He marked the drowsy flag that hung
Unwaved by wind, unfrayed by shower,
He listened to the birds that sung—
Go forth and win the baunted tower!
The tangled brake made way for him,
The twisted brambles bent aside;
And lo, he pierced the forest dim,
And lo, he won the fairy bride!
For be was young, but ah! we find—
All we, whose beards are flecked with gray,
Our fairy castle's far behind,
We watch it from the darkling way.

107

'Twas ours, that palace, in our youth;
We revelled there in happy cheer,
Who scarce dare visit now in sooth,
Le Vieux Château de Souvenir!
For not the boughs of forest green
Begird that castle far away;
There is a mist where we have been
That weeps about it, cold and gray.
And if we seek to travel back
'Tis through a thicket dim and sere,
With many a grave beside the track,
And many a haunting form of fear.
Dead leaves are wet among the moss,
With weed and thistle overgrown—
A ruined barge within the fosse—
A castle built of crumbling stone!
The drawbridge drops from rusty chains;
There comes no challenge from the hold;
No squire, nor dame, nor knight remains,
Of all who dwelt with us of old.
And there is silence in the hall—
No sound of songs, no ray of fire;
But gloom where all was glad, and all
Is darkened with a vain desire.

108

And every picture's fading fast,
Of fair Jehanne, or Cydalise.
Lo, the white shadows hurrying past,
Below the boughs of dripping trees!

Ah rise, and march, and look not back,
Now the long way has brought us here;
We may not turn and seek the track
To the old Château de Souvenir!

109

The Ballade of the Subconscious Self

Who suddenly calls to our ken
The knowledge that should not be there;
Who charms Mr. Stead with the pen
Of the Prince of the Powers of the Air;
Who makes physiologists stare—
Is he ghost, is he demon, or elf?
Who fashions the dream of the fair?
It is just the Subconscious Self.

He's the ally of medicine men
Who consult the Australian bear,
And 'tis he, with his lights on the fen,
Who helps Jack o' Lanthorn to snare
The peasants of Devon, who swear
Under Commonwealth, Stuart, or Guelph,
That they never had half such a scare—
It is just the Subconscious Self.

110

It is he, from his cerebral den,
Who raps upon table and chair,
Who frightens the housemaid, and then
Slinks back, like a thief, to his lair:
'Tis the brownie (according to Mair)
Who rattles the pots on the shelf,
But the psychical sages declare
‘It is just the Subconscious Self’.

Envoy

Prince, each of us all is a pair—
The Conscious, who labours for pelf,
And the other, who charmed Mr. Blair,
It is just the Subconscious Self.

111

Song by the Subconscious Self

(Rhymes made in a Dream)

I know not what my secret is,
I only know 'tis mine;
I know to dwell with it were bliss,
To die for it divine.
I cannot yield it in a kiss,
Nor breathe it in a sigh,
I know that I have lived for this;
For this, my love, I die.

112

Ballade of Christmas Ghosts

Between the moonlight and the fire
In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire
To make your merry blood run slow!
How old, how grave, how wise we grow!
No Christmas ghost can make us chill,
Save those that troop in mournful row—
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

The beasts can talk in barn and byre
On Christmas Eve, old legends know;
As year by year the years retire,
We men fall silent then I trow;
Such sights hath memory to show,
Such voices from the silence thrill,
Such shapes return with Christmas snow—
The ghosts we all can raise at will.

113

O children of the village choir,
Your carols on the midnight throw;
Oh bright across the mist and mire
Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas glow!
Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,
Let's cheerily descend the hill;
Be welcome all, to come or go,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

Envoy

Friend, sursum corda, soon or slow
We part, like guests who've joyed their fill;
Forget them not, nor mourn them so,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!