Old Halloween poems, set to music

Before Halloween was about costumes and candy, American magazines printed poems for it. Three of these four first appeared in Harper's Weekly between 1896 and 1910 (Joel Benton, Ada Foster Murray and John Kendrick Bangs). The fourth is Madison Cawein's, from his 1907 book Weeds by the Wall. All four are in the public domain.

They do not sound alike. Benton gives us pixies, kobolds and the real fortune-telling customs of the night, then admits he would rather be sixteen again. Bangs sends the ghosts and witches to a party where nobody is scared. Murray starts with a fire on the hearth and ends with lights burning for the dead. Cawein's is the darkest: a man alone in a wood feels a woman before he sees her, and she is not alive.

Read side by side, they share one idea: on this night the past comes back. Each poem below has its original text, the story behind it and a close reading, with a link to the song Rouxandra made from it.