Poem by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

The Old Ghost

Over the water an old ghost strode
To a churchyard on the shore,
And over him the waters had flowed
A thousand years or more,
And pale and wan and weary
Looked never a sprite as he;
For it's lonely and it's dreary
The ghost of a body to be
That has mouldered away in the sea.

Over the billows the old ghost stepped,
And the winds in mockery sung;
For the bodiless ghost would fain have wept
Over the maiden that lay so young
'Mong the thistles and toadstools so hoary;
And he begged of the waves a tear,
But they shook upwards their moonlight glory,
And the shark looked on with a sneer
At his yearning desire and agony. 

1. Song from the Waters
2. The Rosy Hour
3. Lines Written in a Blank Leaf of the ‘Prometheus Unbound’
4. Song of the Stygian Naiades
5. Song on the Water

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