Hallowe’en
- Author
- Ada Foster Murray
- Date
- 1909
- Language
- English
- Country
- Form
- Three five-line stanzas: rhymed couplets and a recurring closing line
- First published
- Harper’s Weekly, 30 October 1909 (collected in Flower o’ the Grass, 1910)
The source
A gypsy flame is on the hearth,
Sign of this carnival of mirth.
Through the dun fields and from the glade
Flash merry folk in masquerade--
It is the witching Hallowe’en.
Pale tapers glimmer in the sky,
The dead and dying leaves go by;
Dimly across the faded green
Strange shadows, stranger shades, are seen,--
It is the mystic Hallowe’en.
Soft gusts of love and memory
Beat at the heart reproachfully;
The lights that burn for those who die
Were flickering low, let them flare high--
It is the haunting Hallowe’en.
Commentary
Dr. Ruxandra RouxHead of Literary Research & Development
Ada Foster Murray, Harper's Weekly, October 30, 1909, signed “A. F. Murray”. No known event stands behind it. Read it as a seasonal lyric, not a diary.
It starts as a party and turns into a memory. Fire on the hearth, dark fields, people drifting through like a masquerade, and then the “dead and dying leaves” lead to thoughts of the dead, and the lights burning for them. Halloween becomes the night the line between the living and the absent runs thin. “Mystic” and “haunting” are two sides of one feeling: the pull of the night, and the melancholy of remembering people who are gone. She appeared in the magazines of her day, later collected in Flower o' the Grass, and never became a central figure. The lights, at least, are still burning.
Songs
The song made from Hallowe’en.
