Poems to Read for Halloween

For Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve, the night when the division between earthly reality and the spirit world vanishes, here’s our selection of classic poems about ghosts, goblins and spirits, including the famous Witches’ Spell from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the traditional ballad “Tam Lin” and poems by Lord Brooke Fulke Greville, Robert Herrick, Robert Burns, Edgar Allan Poe & Christina Rossetti. This year we’ve added George Gordon, Lord Byron’s apocalyptic “Darkness”--a poem for reciting in a candlelit parlor if ever there was one. Light your jack’o’lantern and read Byron’s poem aloud while you’re waiting for trick-or-treaters after sundown on Wednesday. Spooky!