DANCE OF THE DEAD.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
THE sexton looked forth, at the mid hour of night,
O’er the tombs where the dead were reclining;
The moon, at its full, gave a great, ghostly light,
And the churchyard as day was shining.
First one, then another—oh, terrible sight!—
Each grave opened wide, and, in gowns long and white,
The dead all arose from their sleeping,
Round the tombs grimly dancing and leaping.
In a skeleton ring, then, together they hung,
While they danced as the waves of the ocean—
The poor and the rich, and the old and the young—
But their grave-clothes hindered their motion;
And, as here no modesty held its broad sway,
They all shook them off, and around them there lay
Their winding sheets, here and there scattered,
And they naked—but that little mattered.
In a frenzy of joy then they swung their long shanks,
Their long fingers in unison snapping,
And they clicked and clacked as they played wild pranks,
As though timber on timber were clapping.
At last it was o’er, and the skeleton crowd,
One after another, each slipped on its shroud;
Then into their cold graves they glided,
And silence once more presided.
Schell, Stanley (1903) Hallowee’en Festivities, N0.31 Werner’s Readings and Recitations, Edgar S. Werner & Company, New York. Public Domain
A Victorian Ghost Story 