The Manitowoc tribune. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1866-1878, 1870-06-02
GHOSTS.

With elemental force the North storms beat.
And load the window psnes with dreary sleet;
There's heard without the tapping blinds.
The victims of the haunting winds.
iresde friends there is a weird might
In the wild darkness Of this starless night:
And fears quite underlined the fancies SOW,
We filled with witch thoughts of long ago.
We seem to catch at strange existences
Through waning light of hrewood crevices;
In corners dark ghostly chickering's
Which stir our souls with wild imagnngs
When dismal winds through cobwebbed garrets moan
And rattling shingles add their mingling tone.
Those dread socads falling the startled ear
Fill the soul with unreasonable fear.
They now rise from abysses blackly Deep
From every niche and gloomy closet creep.
Those genii of solitariness
That rob their victim of his marliness.
Along the floor unearthly shadows crawl,
And deep tomb sounds are heard tina. may appall;
And srsly deaths heads from the darkness burst,
The rmer tenements of souls now curst,
With veiceless.re in a sepulchral strife
They play horrid pantomime of life.
Now monstrous visions grow and reason reels.
ROT misery through each tortured hbre feels,
Oft thinks himself racked by the lmps of hell,
Whose boundless horrors none. It's said, can tell:
He who in stern strife e'er preserves his fame
Is quite subdued By superstitions hane.
All! what strange things writ on memory's scroll
Along whoss magic lines my wild thoughts roll.
When were gathered at the social hearth,
Where purest streams of joy should have oderth,
OFT did listen TO some fearful tale
OF haunting ghosts and saddened spirits wall.
Till outward things dread phantoms seemed to cast
My thoughts within the circle fled aghast:
And watching the fire climb the chimney back
Timed to ghost step each explosive crack;
And listening mute for the rafting latch
Did wait with breathless dread glimpse to catch
OF graveyard occupants who might with groans
Horrifc haunt in their fieshless bones.
Perchance when night birds flap the dismal wing
And fancies dark nlissrere sing,
Most fifty for the nights wild loneliness
When all things frightful stare with ghostliness.
Some darkly famed and ancient rookery
OF phantom, shapes and death-Iike myste-y,
Gives BY strange tales far spread through many mile
4 fearful history Of its gloomy pile
Adown yon darksoue gorge ancient mill
Around which fit the owl and whippow:
It's said with laying voice and shake of head
That there are seen at night the phantom dead.
BY myths weig hed down and fooled by jugglery,
Protected not by reasons armory,
Some think iends are sent from ike burning pit,
With fiery darts their souls exposed to hit.
There whose minds inwrapt by boding gloom
See in dread shadows cast an awful doom;
Large-with ma inative horrors TEEN:
See gathering along the sky
And witches gazing with evil eye;
Black devils staring through the seething air
Betokening things of fathomless despair;
Believe themselves condemned 10y Gods just ire
10 be by heil-born imps in quenchess fire
Manipulated and cast farther down
To depths of forthshalowed by His frown,
Thus life is filed with wildness and with gloom
And crowded hard the real scarce has room.
The painful flashes of a fevered mind,
When blind to nature aud to reason blind.
Discovers ty its strange delusiye light
Deep Swallowed ya=arieS of horrid sight,
The strangely wrought and coDjured imagery
OF non-existence and charmed pageantry
OF myths alIuring to unrealism
Are seen arrayed 'gainst stern materiasm.
Unhappy those who life's varied stage
From crowded city TO lone hermitage,
confound what's evident in mystery
Ner once consider God is harmony.
To Il i'm in whom there is infnity
Can iIrn,,tc gyFin.s of humanity,
Prooaiming by some certain mad belief
N which the soul involved finds no relief
lie gives through freaks good fortune reverse.
Thus showing clear patchwork universe?