When folks should be asleep,

And many and many’s the time I’ve cried

To the darkness brooding far and wide

Over the land and the deep:

“Whom do you want, O lonely night,

That you wail the long hours through?”

And the night would say in its ghostly way:

“Yoooooo! Yoooooooooo! Yoooooooooo!”

My mother told me long ago

When I was a little lad