What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
Thomas Bailey AldrichCome watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.
Thomas Bailey AldrichThose forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind That smites us by the roadsideโare the Night's Innumerable children. Unconfined By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, Uneasy spirits, steal into the air From festering graveyards when the curfew tolls At the day's death... And wheresoever murders have been done, In stately palaces or lonesome woods, Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods Some sad, invisible, accursรฉd Ghost!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich