Ode to the English Ghost Story

We peek around the edges of their world.
In seaside rooms and old churches they seek
always the dark grail, a life unfurled
and eternal in screams of mortal meek.
The Bard's were facts of life, a soul survived
and just as coarse as when it roamed in flesh.
But distance from the True Cross brought revived
and chilling fear of Them, the broken mesh
between our worlds an entrance to be sealed.
The killing ghouls on garden paths and moods
in which a girl can rot, her soul repealed
with rites offensive to the bleeding roods.

The century of love and grace and steam,
was that in which began the haunted dream.