THE DISAPPOINTMENT

A house I took, and many a spook

Was deemed to haunt that House,

I bade the glum Researchers come

With Bogles to carouse.

That House I'd sought with anxious thought,

‘ Twas old,‘ twas dark as sin,

And deeds of bale, so ran the tale,

Had oft been done therein.

Full many a child its mother wild,

Men said, had strangled there,

Full many a sire, in heedless ire,

Had slain his daughter fair!

‘ Twas rarely let: I can n't forget

A recent tenant's dread,

This widow lone had heard a moan

Proceeding from her bed.

The tenants next were chiefly vexed

By spectres grim and grey.

A Headless Ghost annoyed them most,

And so they did not stay.

The next in turn saw corpse lights burn,

And also a Banshie,

A spectral Hand they could not stand,

And left the House to me.

Then came my friends for divers ends,

Some curious, some afraid;

No direr pest disturbed their rest

Than a neat chambermaid.

The grisly halls were gay with balls,

One melancholy nook

Where ghosts GALORE were seen before

Now yielded ne'er a spook.

When man and maid, all unafraid,

‘ Sat out’ upon the stairs,

No spectre dread, with feet of lead,

Came past them unawares.

I know not why, but alway I

Have found that it is so,

That when the glum Researchers come

The brutes of bogeys — go!