Shadow March - Stevenson

Shadow March

circa 1913
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

All around the house is the jet-black night;
It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
And it moves with the moving flame.

Now my little heart goes a beating like a drum,
With the breath of the Bogies in my hair;
And all around the candle and the crooked shadows come,
And go marching along up the stair.

The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
The shadow of the child that goes to bed--
All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp,
With the black night overhead.

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From A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods, 1913