Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Phantom Ball

You remember the hall on the corner?
   To-night as I walked down street
I heard the sound of music,
   And the rhythmic beat and beat,
In time to the pulsing measure
   Of lightly tripping feet.

And I turned and entered the doorway--
   It was years since I had been there--
Years, and life seemed altered:
   Pleasure had changed to care.
But again I was hearing the music
   And watching the dancers fair.

And then, as I stood and listened,
   The music lost its glee;
And instead of the merry waltzers
   There were ghosts of the Used-to-be--
Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers
   Who once had danced with me.

Oh, 'twas a ghastly picture!
   Oh, 'twas a gruesome crowd!
Each bearing a skull on his shoulder,
   Each trailing a long white shroud,
As they whirled in the dance together,
   And the music shrieked aloud.

As they danced, their dry bones rattled
   Like shutters in a blast;
And they stared from eyeless sockets
   On me as they circled past;
And the music that kept them whirling
   Was a funeral dirge played fast.

Some of them wore their face-cloths,
   Others were rotted away.
Some had mould on their garments,
   And some seemed dead but a day.
Corpses all, but I knew them
   As friends, once blithe and gay.

Beauty and strength and manhood--
   And this was the end of it all:
Nothing but phantoms whirling
   In a ghastly skeleton ball.
But the music ceased--and they vanished,
   And I came away from the hall. 

1. The Birth of the Orchid
2. The Call (All wantonly in hours of joy)
3. Be Not Attached
4. Behold the Earth
5. The Black Charger

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