One learned gentleman, "a sage grave man," Talk'd of the Ghost in Hamlet, "sheath'd in steel;"— His well-read friend, who next to speak began, Said, "That was Poetry, and nothing real;" A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal; Of sheeted Spectres spoke with shorten'd breath, And thrice he quoted "Drelincourt on Death."
Nick smoked, and smoked, and trembled as he heard The point discuss'd, and all they said upon it, How, frequently, some murder'd man appear'd, To tell his wife and children who had done it; Or how a Miser's ghost, with grisly beard, And pale lean visage, in an old Scotch bonnet, Wander'd about to watch his buried money! When all at once Nick heard the clock strike One,—he
Sprang from his seat, not doubting but a lecture Impended from his fond and faithful She; Nor could he well to pardon him expect her, For he had promised to "be home to tea;" But having luckily the key o' the back door, He fondly hoped that, unperceived, he Might creep up stairs again, pretend to doze, And hoax his spouse with music from his nose.
Vain fruitless hope!—The wearied sentinel At eve may overlook the crouching foe, Till, ere his hand can sound the alarum-bell, He sinks beneath the unexpected blow; Before the whiskers of Grimalkin fell, When slumb'ring on her post, the mouse may go;— But woman, wakeful woman, 's never weary, —Above all, when she waits to thump her deary.
Soon Mrs. Mason heard the well-known tread; She heard the key slow creaking in the door, Spied, through the gloom obscure, towards the bed Nick creeping soft, as oft he had crept before; When, bang, she threw a something at his head, And Nick at once lay prostrate on the floor; While she exclaim'd with her indignant face on,— "How dare you use your wife so, Mr. Mason?"
Spare we to tell how fiercely she debated, Especially the length of her oration,— Spare we to tell how Nick expostulated, Roused by the bump into a good set passion, So great, that more than once he execrated, Ere he crawl'd into bed in his usual fashion; —The Muses hate brawls; suffice it then to say, He duck'd below the clothes—and there he lay!
'Twas now the very witching time of night, When churchyards groan, and graves give up their dead, And many a mischievous, enfranchised Sprite Had long since burst his bonds of stone or lead, And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight, To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed, Sleeping perhaps serenely as a porpoise, Nor dreaming of this fiendish Habeas Corpus.
Not so our Nicholas, his meditations Still to the same tremendous theme recurred, The same dread subject of the dark narrations, Which, back'd with such authority, he'd heard; Lost in his own horrific contemplations, He ponder'd o'er each well-remember'd word; When at the bed's foot, close beside the post, He verily believed he saw—a Ghost!
Plain and more plain the unsubstantial Sprite To his astonish'd gaze each moment grew; Ghastly and gaunt, it rear'd its shadowy height, Of more than mortal seeming to the view, And round its long, thin, bony fingers drew A tatter'd winding-sheet, of course all white;— The moon that moment peeping through a cloud, Nick very plainly saw it through the shroud!
And now those matted locks, which never yet Had yielded to the comb's unkind divorce, Their long-contracted amity forget, And spring asunder with elastic force; Nay, e'en the very cap, of texture coarse, Whose ruby cincture crown'd that brow of jet, Uprose in agony—the Gorgon's head Was but a type of Nick's up-squatting in the bed.