Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883,
By George Francis Dawson,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.
It is the night of all nights of the year, When ghosts and warlocks haunt the troubled earth, And disembodied spirits visit us— Spirits of good and evil from the dead, Fresh from the angel hosts and from the damned, And from the vast profound betwixt the two; Spirits from living bodies, disenthralled By blesséd sleep, or yearnings most intense, Or by more subtle agencies beyond our ken— Bearing portentious messages to those Who in full faith the future would behold.
The clear-cut radiance of a frosty moon Lights up, and darkens, all the growth around. The great trees stand out black against the stars. The wind in gusts bestirs the Autumn leaves, Whose late October tints are lost in gloom, Or are grown pallid with their shivering; Whose fitful rustlings are the only sounds Which break the dead cold silence of the night. Yet hist! faint eerie tones are sometimes heard— Which blanch the cheek and palsy all the limbs— Like to the moaning of departed souls!
Within the farm-house is a large high room Unceiled, but studded thick with rafters old, Grown black with age or smoke; around its walls Stiff hams and bacon-flitches dimly seen; And here and there the dim uncertain forms Of kitchen-ware and chairs and metal mugs; From the low windows, half across the floor, Stretch bands of moonlight flecked with shadowed leaves Which tremble till the moonlight seems to dance; Beside the fireplace stands some piled-up wood, But the great hearthstone opens cold and black; Beneath the inner door, a chink of light Seems but to make the dimness darker yet; The only sound the tick-tack of the clock, Which serves to make the silence audible.
High on the hill a lordly pile looks down From its proud eminence and grand domain Upon the farm-house in the vale below. Builded of marble, lofty, turretted, It looms beneath the moonlight o'er the trees Like some etherial castle in the skies, Limned in white alabaster, glistening, grand, Unreal, weird, not made by mortal hands. But sudden, as one's wrapt gaze ta