HALLOWEEN TREATS

by Various Poets

How happy am I when I crawl into bed --

A rattlesnake hisses a tune at my head,

A gay little centipede, all without fear,

Crawls over my pillow and into my ear.

Traditional

Do you ever think when a hearse goes by

That you may be the next to die?

An undertaker tall and thin

Digs a hole and puts you in.

All goes well for about a week,

And then the coffin  begins to leak.

The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out.

The worms play pinochle on your snout!

They use your bones for telephones

And call you up when you're not home.

Traditional

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

Macbeth:IV.i.10-19; 35-38

William Shakespeare

The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,

And so is the cat-a-mountain;

The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,

And the frog peeps out o' the fountain.

from The Masque of Queens

Ben Jonson

This stone commemorates his name.

This grave received his tiny frame.

He's food for worms. To be precise,

One worm, one mouthful, would suffice.

Immanuel Frances

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

e.e. cummings

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson

As I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn't there;

He wasn't there again today --

I wish, I wish, he'd stay away.

Hughes Mearns

October turned my maple's leaves to gold;

The most are gone now; here and there one lingers.

Soon these will slip from out the twig's weak hold,

Like coins between a dying miser's fingers. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Listen . . .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling

The wind is passing thro'.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads

The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti