Hallowe'en

A幽灵ly verse from 1910 captures Halloween when it still carried the old magic - when the boundary between the living and the dead grew thin, and the night belonged to spirits. John Kendrick Bangs, the American humorist and fantasy writer, conjures a world where shadows lengthen and the unseen world draws close. The poem moves through the symbols we've inherited: flickering jack-o'-lanterns, the rustle of dead leaves, the distant call of night birds. There's wit here, but also something quieter - a meditation on the autumn of the year and perhaps of life itself. Bangs writes with the practiced ease of a man who knew that Halloween was both carnival and ceremony, both child's play and ancient ritual. For readers who want to feel what Halloween felt like when it was still strange and new and wonderfully, safely spooky.