BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS
143
church they set out a banquet for the dead. If any food is left in the morning, evil is in store for the house.
"Hark! Hark to the wind! 'T is the night, they say,
When all souls come back from the far away—
The dead, forgotten this many a day!
"And the dead remembered—ay! long and well—
And the little children whose spirits dwell
In God's green garden of asphodel.
"Have you reached the country of all content,
O souls we know, since the day you wont
From this time-worn world, where your years were spent?
"Would you come back to the sun and the rain,
The sweetness, the strife, the thing we call pain,
And then unravel life's tangle again?
"I lean to the dark—Hush!—was it a sigh?
Or the painted vine-leaves that rustled by?
Sheard: Hallowe'en.
