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Poetry has always dabbled in the dark-side of life – literally always. Our earliest poetry was obsessed with monsters, murder, horror, and hauntings. “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” “The Iliad,” “The Odyssey,” “Beowulf,” “The Inferno,” “Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” “The Faerie Queene,” and “La Morte d’Arthur” all involve sorcery, monsters, and the macabre. This collection of Gothic poetry includes 84 samplings from the masters of the genre: Poe, Dickinson, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Goethe, Frost, Burns, Milton, Pushkin, and more. These poems range from epics (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) to a few lines (“Theme in Yellow”), and span in time from the Elizabethan Age to the Great Depression. They deal with ghostly abductions, soul-crushing curses, shapeshifting seducers, brutal goblin hordes, atmospheric nightscapes, ghost-plagued houses, merciless witches, lustful vampires and yes – a couple poems about black cats and jack-o-lanterns.

 

While most were originally written in English, many have been translated from German, French, Russian, Middle English, and Scots, bringing together a cross-cultural exploration of human anxieties, fantasies, and nightmares. In the meantime, we offer this little volume of verse to read on cold autumn nights – perchance with a glass of mulled wine at your elbow, by the pallid flicker of a blood-red candle dripping down the skull on your desk.

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— GHOSTS —

TALES OF SPIRITS AND SHADES

 

Dance of the Dead – J. W. von Goethe                         

We Are Seven – William Wordsworth                      

The Shadow on the Stone – Thomas Hardy                    

The Highwayman – Alfred Noyes                               

Ghosts – Fitz-James O’Brien                                       

The Poor Ghost  – Christina Rossetti                        

Methought I Saw… – John Milton                              

I Died for Beauty (#449) – Emily Dickinson                 

The Phantom Wooer – Thomas Lovell Beddoes         

Lenore – Gottfried August Bürger                         

The Ghosts’ Moonshine – Thomas Lovell Beddoes      

 

— GOBLINS —

TALES OF SPRITES AND BOGEYS

 

Little Orphant Annie – James Whitcomb Riley               

The Erl King – J. W. von Goethe                                

The Kraken – Alfred, Lord Tennyson                       

The Conqueror Worm – Edgar Allan Poe                    

Jabberwocky – Lewis Carrol                                        

Goblin Market – Christina Rossetti                         

The Stolen Child – W. B. Yeats                                   

The Tyger – William Blake                                        

Nine Little Goblins – James Whitcomb Riley             

The Garrison of Cape Ann – John Greenleaf Whittier   

Tam Lin – Traditional Ballad                                 

Will-O’-the-Wisp – Madison Cawein                          

 

 

— WITCHES —

TALES OF SORCERY AND HAGS

 

The Amber Witch – William Vaughan Moody           

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – J. W. von Goethe                

The Witch of Atlas – Percy Bysshe Shelley                 

A Weird Gathering – John Greenleaf Whittier       

Macbeth’s Song of the Witches – William Shakespeare  

Tam O’Shanter – Robert Burns                                   

The Laboratory – Robert Browning                           

The Hag – Robert Herrick                                        

The White Witch– James Weldon Johnson                 

The Witch of Coös – Robert Frost                                 

The Witch Bride – William Allingham                       

The Town Witch – Madison Cawein                            

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— VAMPIRES —

TALES OF SEDUCERS AND SHAPESHIFTERS

 

The Vampire – Conrad Aiken                                      

La Belle Dame Sans Merci – John Keats                        

Christabel – S. T. Coleridge                                        

The Ghost – Charles Baudelaire                               

The Bride of Corinth – J. W. von Goethe                      

The Vampyre – John Stagg                                          

The World – Christina Rossetti                                

Demon of the Gibbet – Fitz-James O’Brien                    

The Vampire – Rudyard Kipling                                 

The Giaour – George Gordon, Lord Byron              

The Vampire Bride – Henry Thomas Liddell              

The Vampire – Madison Cawein                                 

 

 

— HAUNTED HOUSES —

TALES OF TROUBLED HOMES AND PLACES

 

Ghost House – Robert Frost                                                   

The Haunted Palace – Edgar Allan Poe                                  

The Haunted Chamber – Henry W. Longfellow                      

The Listeners – Walter de la Mare                                        

The Haunted House – Thomas Hood                                         

Haunted Houses – Henry W. Longfellow                               

The Mistletoe Bough – N. T. Haynes Bayly                               

The Haunted Beach – Mary Darby Robinson                           

The Haunted Oak – Paul Laurence Dunbar                        

Low Barometer – Robert Bridges                                            

Haunted Spot – Emma Lazarus                                              

The Haunted House – Alice Cary                                              

 

 

— HAUNTED MEN —

TALES OF TROUBLED HEARTS AND MINDS

 

The Eve of St. Agnes – John Keats                                            

The Raven – Edgar Allan Poe                                                

Ulalume – Edgar Allan Poe                                                   

 Because I Could Not Stop for Death (#712) – Emily Dickinson     

Lenore – Edgar Allan Poe                                                     

The Sleeper – Edgar Allan Poe                                            

To Be Haunted  – Emily Dickinson                                         

Annabel Lee – Edgar Allan Poe                                              

A Dream within a Dream – Edgar Allan Poe                           

I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (#465) – Emily Dickinson       

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – S. T. Coleridge                     

Dreamland – Edgar Allan Poe                                               

 

 

— HALLOWE’EN —

TALES OF DARK NIGHTS AND MOONLIT SKIES

 

Halloween – Robert Burns                                                      

Theme in Yellow – Carl Sandburg                                           

In Night (Sonnet 100) – Lord Brooke Fulke Greville            

All Souls’ Night, 1917 – Hortense King Flexner                    

All Souls’ – Edith Wharton                                                   

Ghost Music – Robert Graves                                                 

Hallowe’en – Madison Cawein                                                  

Windy Nights – Robert Louis Stevenson                               

Darkness – George Gordon, Lord Byron                              

Hallowe’en – Joel Benton                                                       

Hamlet’s Fifth Soliloquy – William Shakespeare                     

At Sunset – Madison Cawein                                                   

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