She took his head upon her knee
And called him love and very fair.
And with a golden comb she combed
The grave-dust from his hair.
Lowell, Amy. The Crossroads. (In her Men, Women, and Ghosts.)
In polyphonic prose. The body buried at the crossroads struggles for twenty years to free itself of the stake driven through its heart and wreak vengeance on its enemy. It is finally successful as the funeral cortège of this enemy comes down the road.
"He wavers like smoke in the buffeting wind. His fingers blow out like smoke, his head ripples in the gale. Under the sign post, in the pouring rain, he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it. . ."
Marquis, Don. Haunted. (In his Dreams and Dust.)
Drink and forget, make merry and boast,
But the boast rings false and the jest is thin.
In the hour that I meet ye ghost to ghost,
Stripped of the flesh that ye skulk within,
Stripped to the coward soul 'ware of its sin,
Ye shall learn, ye shall learn, whether dead men hate!
Masefield, John. Cape Horn Gospel. (In his Collected Poems. 1918.)
"I'm a-weary of them there mermaids,"
Says old Bill's ghost to me,
"It ain't no place for Christians,
Below there, under sea.
For it's all blown sands and shipwrecks
And old bones eaten bare,
And them cold fishy females
With long green weeds for hair."
—— Mother Carey.
She lives upon an iceberg to the norred
'N' her man is Davy Jones,
'N' she combs the weeds upon her forred
With poor drowned sailors' bones.