University of Virginia Library

Hear the story of the Ghouls!
Who will tell us of the Ghouls?
Who has been told?
Of the Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls,—
Who are neither man nor woman,
Who are neither beast nor human,
Who are neither fish nor cayman,—
Who will tell us, clerk or layman?
They are Ghouls:
Live in holes
Like moles
Under the boles, boles, boles
Of old trees where the forest rolls
Of the mouldy days of old;
Or in tarns, tarns, tarns
Dull and dismal as the yarns
Of morbific spools,—
Dank tarns and dismal pools.
There dwell the Ghouls,
With other tarn'd fowls,—
Not to say fools.

But the high tarn nation place is
The dank tarn of Auber
In the Ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
There they sit with their faces
Bow'd down to their knees,
At the feet of dead trees,
With the dew dropping down from their hair,
They sit there from the end of October
To the end of the winter next year.
These are woodlandish Ghouls,
Damp, desolate souls
Who have nothing to do
But be haunting the dank tarn of Auber
Through the mildewest part of the year,
That begins at the end of October
In the woodlandish Ghouldom of Weir.

Yes! these are the woodlandish Ghouls—
Ghouls—Ghouls—Ghouls
With no business kind of controls—
Mere shoals.
But busier,—ah! much busier polls
Have the Churchyard Ghouls,
Prowling there for the bodies of poor dead souls;
And who after supper
Take an upper
Climb to their goal in the steeple:
Where they sit, where they brood, where they heap ill
On the people undergone:
Sitting cheeks by jowls.
Now and then they roll a stone,
Having set the bells a-tolling
In a muffled monotone,
On the people undergone.
And their King it is who tolls,
As he lolls, lolls, lolls
On his throne all carved with scrolls
In his palace in the steeple,
Where he lolls among his people:
Ah! his people who roll stones,
In muffled monotones,
On the hearts o' the underfolk,
In the dead of night awoke
By the melancholy yells,
By the miserable howls,
To say nothing of the growls,
Of these Ghouls,
Of these tollers of the bells,
As they toll, toll, toll;
Toll;
Toll;
Toll
A pæan from the bells:
And the merry bosom swells
Of the Ghoul-King as he tolls,
As he dances and he yells
To the throbbing of the bells
As they toll,
Toll,
Toll.

It is so the poet tells
Who has heard these ghoulish bells;
And whose rheumy running rhyme,
Bowl'd in time, time, time,
With the throbbing and the sobbing
And the bobbing and hobnobbing
And sense-robbing of the bells,
Could alone expound their yells,
For the clamor each expels,
From the loud full-hammer'd tone,
Sometime hoarsening to a groan,
Sometime worsening to a moan,
Till one bell tolls out alone
In a muffled monotone
Between murmuring and moan,—
Till the King loll'd there, as shown,
On his scroll-becarven throne,
Grown weary of the yells
And the bowling of the bells
(Well! well!—to be so bold)
As they moan and groan and yell
Pell-mell,
Would be fain to be unthroned,
For the pain too wholly own'd,
Untold but wholly known,
(Toll de roll!)
Of the moans, groans, yells,
As they shake the steeple stone
And awake the undergone
(Rest his soul!)
With the tolling of their knells,
Roll'd like blood-drops from heart-wells,
Misereres out of cells,
Or weird witch-moulded spells
Under fells:
The bells, bells, bells,
Whose tolling ever tells
Of Ghouls, of hells, of knells,
Told by bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,
The unholy yelling, knelling, wholly sense-dispelling,
Moaning, groaning, all-atoning,
Rolling tolling of the bells,
Bells,
Bells.