The wind howled a dirge and the moon hid its face,
There were skulls and dry blade-bones all over the place;
But the Lord Mayor of London, no tremor had he—
Said his lordship, “It’s here that the thieves will put me.”
So he crept past the tombs and the graves of the dead,
In spite of grim spectres, with eye-sockets red;
And he hid him away in a newly-made grave,
Just to see how at midnight the ghosts would behave.
Thought he, “I will watch these poor victims arise—
They shall tell me their sorrows, I’ll gather their sighs;