Hallowe'en in a Suburb

Written 1926

            The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,

               And the trees have a silver glare;

            Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,

               And the harpies of upper air,

               That flutter and laugh and stare.

            For the village dead to the moon outspread

               Never shone in the sunset's gleam,

            But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep

               Where the rivers of madness stream

               Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

            A chill wind blows through the rows of sheaves

               In the meadows that shimmer pale,

            And comes to twine where the headstones shine

               And the ghouls of the churchyard wail

               For harvests that fly and fail.

            Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change

               That tore from the past its own

            Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power

               Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne,

               And looses the vast unknown.

            So here again stretch the vale and plain

               That moons long-forgotten saw,

            And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,

               Sprung out of the tomb's black maw

               To shake all the world with awe.

            And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,

               The ugliness and the pest

            Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,

               Shall some day be with the rest,

               And brood with the shades unblest.

            Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,

               And the leprous spires ascend;

            For new and old alike in the fold

               Of horror and death are penned,

               For the hounds of Time to rend.