Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights <br />That flash on lone morasses, the quick wind <br />That smites us by the roadside are the Night's <br />Innumerable children. Unconfined <br />By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, <br />Still on probation, steal into the air <br />From ancient battlefields and churchyard knolls <br />At the day's ending. Pestilence and despair <br />Fly with the startled bats at set of sun; <br />And wheresoever murders have been done, <br />In crowded palaces or lonely woods, <br />Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost <br />Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods <br />Some mute, invisible, accursèd ghost.<br /><br />Thomas Bailey Aldrich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eidolons/
