Robert Burns
Halloween

James Child
Traditional Ballad

Kate Finley
Halloween

Thomas Hardy
Withered Arm

Robert Stephen Hawker
The Botathen Ghost

Washington Irving
The Legend of Sleepy Hallow
                                   HALLOWEEN By John N. Morris (1977)

    This is the day the children
    Dress as the dead. In their disguises
    All evening they play Hell with our evening,
    Our terrors in their muslins.
    Skeletons in high hats,
    Perennial little queens,
    They come back shrieking.
    We are the kindly ones
    And we feed them
    Their annual meal, a handful
    Of sugar the shape of corn,
    Apples, a rope of black candy.
    All year they starve for this food
    In a trunk in the basement.
    And then they are gone.
    They scream back to their houses.
    One day we will lay them away
    Forever, the thin disguises,
    Papery, perishing stuffs. They say,
    The apples were full of knives.
    We will never return.