A Ghost of Deadly Night





She was a ghost of deadly night
When first she caused me such a fright:

A ghastly apparition, sent
To terrorise and to torment;
Her eyes as sockets lit with red;
Like bleeding wells of fatal dread;
And nought at all about her seemed

  From wickedness to be redeemed;  
A dancing shape, an image bleak,
  To haunt, impend and of death reek. 


I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet an old-maid too!
  Her spectral motions grim and dour,
A leering hag, toothless and sour;
A countenance inspiring awe
And bitter reveries so sore;
A creature hideous to the eye
For living mortals to descry,
For only one transient glance
  Could send you into deathly trance.
 

And now I see with inner-mind
The very evil of her kind;
A spectre wheezing fetid breath,
A baleful harbinger of death:
Of firm negation and ill-will,
  Destruction
blind and deadly chill;
A hateful hag, ignoble wraith
  To harm and provoke loss of faith;
And yet a spirit still, and fell
  With something of infernal hell.  

__

With apologies to Wordsworth
She was a Phantom of Delight

The Windmills
__

Poem parody and image © Mirino (PW) November, 2011

No comments: