Ballade of Creatures Abroad by Night

By WILFRED BLANCH TALMAN

These are the creatures abroad by day:
 Fauns and satyrs and elves and gnomes;
Naiads and dryads and centaurs play
 As Great Pan pipes in their forest homes,
But soon after sundown the werewolf roams,
 His eyes agleam in the witch-fire's light;
The old crones' brew in their cauldron foams—
 These are the creatures abroad by night!

Drunken old Dutchmen Van Winkle knew
 Play at bowls with a thunder cloud;
Jovial phantoms by day, these few,
 Till dusk brings ghouls with an earth-stained shroud
And demons of dreadfulness, bloody-browed.
 When doors and casements are fastened tight
To keep out the spell of the ghostly crowd—
 These are the creatures abroad by night!

High on the peak of a Kaatskill crag
 The Old Squaw drowses till evenglow;
Darkness awakens the fiendish hag
 And spirits marshalled by Manitou.
Pallid-tongued specters that whimper low,
 Astride the winds on a vampire-flight,
With slavering priests to the sabbat go—
 These are the creatures abroad by night!

Crown Prince of Darkness, Satanus, pray
 Pierce our eardrums and blind our sight;
Nor haunt us, lest we become as they—
 These are the creatures abroad by night!