Pumpkin Carols & Poems for Halloween

Hello everyone – 

When I was in third grade, way back in the 1970s, our teacher, Miss Begeman, taught our class several “pumpkin carols” to sing for Halloween. These were featured prominently at our class’s annual Halloween party in late October. Everyone was excited to go trick-or-treating for UNICEF in the early afternoon; we then returned to the school for our celebration. In addition to pumpkin carols, snippets of spooky poetry were also recited during the festivities.

Here are a few of my favorite spooky poems, which remind us that Halloween is not only a time for fun and games, but also a time to think back and remember, with heartfelt affection, “all those whom we love, but no longer see.”

 

“The Shadow on the Stone”

By Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

 

I went by the Druid stone

That broods in the garden white and lone,  

And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows  

That at some moments fall thereon

From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,  

And they shaped in my imagining

To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders  

Threw there when she was gardening.

 

I thought her behind my back,

Yea, her I long had learned to lack,

And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,  

Though how do you get into this old track?’  

And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf  

As a sad response; and to keep down grief

I would not turn my head to discover

That there was nothing in my belief.

 

Yet I wanted to look and see

That nobody stood at the back of me;

But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision  

A shape which, somehow, there may be.’  

So I went on softly from the glade,

And left her behind me throwing her shade,  

As she were indeed an apparition—

My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

 

“Halloween”

By John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922)

 

The ghosts of all things past parade,

Emerging from the mist and shade

That hid them from our gaze,

And, full of song and ringing mirth,

In one glad moment of rebirth,

And again they walk the ways of earth

As in the ancient days.

 

The beacon light shines on the hill,

The will-o'-wisps the forests fill

With flashes filched from noon;

And witches on their broomsticks spry

Speed here and yonder in the sky,

And lift their strident voices high

Unto the Hunter's Moon.

 

The air resounds with tuneful notes

From myriads of straining throats,

All hailing Folly Queen;

So join the swelling choral throng,

Forget your sorrow and your wrong,

In one glad hour of joyous song

To honor Halloween!

 

“Dusk in Autumn”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

 

The Moon is like a scimitar,

A little silver scimitar,

A-drifting down the sky.

And near beside it is a star,

A timid twinkling golden star,

That watches like an eye.

 

And through the nursery window-pane

The witches have a fire again,

Just like the ones we make, —

And now I know they’re having tea,

I wish they’d give a cup to me,

With witches’ currant cake.

 

“Hallowe’en in a Suburb”

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

 

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,

And the trees have a silver glare;

Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,

And the harpies of upper air,

That flutter and laugh and stare.

 

For the village dead to the moon outspread

Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,

But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep

Where the rivers of madness stream

Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

 

A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves

In the meadows that shimmer pale,

And comes to twine where the headstones shine

And the ghouls of the churchyard wail

For harvests that fly and fail.

 

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change

That tore from the past its own

Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power

Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne

And looses the vast unknown.

 

So here again stretch the vale and plain

That moons long-forgotten saw,

And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,

Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw

To shake all the world with awe.

 

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,

The ugliness and the pest

Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,

Shall someday be with the rest,

And brood with the shades unblest.

 

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,

And the leprous spires ascend;

For new and old alike in the fold

Of horror and death are penned,

For the hounds of Time to rend.

 

A Halloween card from 1904. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Happy Halloween! 😊

Rob