The Ghosts' High Noon

When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, and the bat in the moonlight flies,
And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, sail over the midnight skies
When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay the moon,
Then is the spectres' holiday - then is the ghosts' high noon!

As the sob of the breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen,
From grey tombstones are gathered the bones that once were women and men,
And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon,
For cockcrow limits our holiday - the dead of the night's high noon!

And then each ghost with his ladye-toast to their churchyard beds take flight,
With a kiss, perhaps, on her lantern chaps, and a grisly grim "good night";
Till the welcome knell of the midnight bell rings forth its jolliest tune,
And ushers our next high holiday - the dead of the night's high noon!

William Schwenck Gilbert

William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas, including 'H.M.S. Pinafore', 'The Pirates of Penzance', and 'The Mikado'. His works are known for their light-hearted satirical humor and have remained popular for their wit and creativity. Gilbert was also a barrister and produced several serious plays.

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Precocious Baby. A Very True Tale

William Schwenck Gilbert, Simple Poetry

The British Tar.

William Schwenck Gilbert, Simple Poetry

Lieutenant-Colonel Flare

William Schwenck Gilbert, Simple Poetry

The Humane Mikado.

William Schwenck Gilbert, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Ghost, The Gallant, The Gael, And The Goblin

O'er unreclaimed suburban clays
Some years ago were hobblin'
An elderly ghost of easy ways,
And an influential goblin.
The ghost was a sombre spectral shape,
A fine old five-act fogy,
The goblin imp, a lithe young ape,
A fine low-comedy bogy.

And as they exercised their joints,
Promoting quick digestion,
They talked on several curious points,
And raised this delicate question:
"Which of us two is Number One
The ghostie, or the goblin?"
And o'er the point they raised in fun
They fairly fell a-squabblin'.

They'd barely speak, and each, in fine,
Grew more and more reflective:
Each thought his own particular line
By chalks the more effective.
At length they settled some one should
By each of them be haunted,
And so arrange...

William Schwenck Gilbert

Haunted

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts,
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.

Black Monday black as its school-room ink
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And its frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first that ...

William Schwenck Gilbert

Haunted.

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they -
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.

Black Monday black as its school-room ink -
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And its frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Garrison Of Cape Ann

From the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann.
Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down,
And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing town.

Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old,
When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled.
Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool,
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul!

With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend
A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned,
In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things,
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.

Dear to ...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Ghosts Of The New World

"There are no ghosts in America."


There are no ghosts, you say,
    To haunt her blaze of light;
No shadows in her day,
    No phantoms in her night.
Columbus' tattered sail
Has passed beyond our hail.

What? On that magic coast,
    Where Raleigh fought with fate,
Or where that Devon ghost
    Unbarred the Golden Gate,
No dark, strange, ear-ringed men
Beat in from sea again?

No ghosts in Salem town
    With silver buckled shoon?
No lovely witch to drown
    Or burn beneath the moon?
Not even a whiff of tea,
On Boston's glimmering quay.

O, ghostly Spanish walls,
    Where brown Franciscans glide,
Is there no voice that calls
    Across the Great Divide,
To pilgrims on their way
Along t...

Alfred Noyes

The Ghosts

There was no wind, and yet the air
    Seemed suddenly astir;
There were no forms, and yet all space
    Seemed thronged with growing hosts.
They came from Where, and from Nowhere,
    Like phantoms as they were;
They came from many a land and place -
    The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts.

And some were white, and some were grey,
    And some were red as blood -
Those ghosts of men who met their death
    Upon the field of war.
Against the skies of fading day,
    Like banks of cloud they stood;
And each wraith asked another wraith,
    'What were we fighting for?'

One said, 'I was my mother's all;
    And she was old and blind.'
Another, 'Back on earth, my wife
    And week-old baby lie.'
Another, 'At the bugle's call,
  ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox