| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | Ghosts |
| | | | For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease |
| Assume what sexes and what shapes they please. |
Pope. | 1 |
| | Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake |
| Thy gory locks at me. |
Shakespeare. | 2 |
| | It was about to speak, when the cock crew, |
| And then it started like a guilty thing |
| Upon a fearful summons. |
Shakespeare. | 3 |
| | Many ghosts, and forms of fright, |
| Have started from their graves to-night; |
| They have driven sleep from mine eyes away. |
Longfellow. | 4 |
| | But, soft: behold! lo, where it comes again! |
| Ill cross it, though it blast me.Stay, illusion! |
| If thou hast any sound, or use a voice, |
| Speak to me. |
Shakespeare. | 5 |
| | I can call up spirits from the vasty deep. |
| Why so can I, or so can any man; |
| But will they come, when you do call for them? |
Shakespeare. | 6 |
| | Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! |
| Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; |
| Thou hast no speculation in those eyes, |
| Which thou dost glare with! |
Shakespeare. | 7 |
| | Some have mistaken blocks and posts, |
| For spectres, apparitions, ghosts, |
| With saucer-eyes and horns; and some |
| Have heard the devil beat a drum. |
Butler. | 8 |
| | I am thy fathers spirit; |
| Doomd for a certain term to walk the night |
| And, for the day, confind to fast in fires, |
| Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, |
| Are burnt and purgd away. |
Shakespeare. | 9 |
| | They gather round, and wonder at the tale |
| Of horrid apparition, tall and ghostly, |
| That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand |
| Oer some new-opend grave, and (strange to tell), |
| Evanishes at crowing of the cock. |
Blair. | 10 |
| | Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! |
| Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damnd, |
| Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, |
| Be thy intents wicked or charitable, |
| Thou comest in such questionable shape |
| That I will speak to thee. |
Shakespeare. | 11 |
| | O, answer me: |
| Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell, |
| Why thy canonizd bones, hearsed in death, |
| Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre, |
| Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urnd, |
| Hath opd his ponderous and marble jaws, |
| To cast thee up again? |
Shakespeare. | 12 | | |
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