He never came out in the daytime, though
He’d always come out at night,
I’d hear his feet, pass in the street
By the gaslamp’s feeble light,
He’d peer through the frosted window glass
And I swear that he always hissed,
Whenever I opened the trap, he’d gone
A-swirl in the yellow mist.
We huddled under the chimney piece,
We huddled under the stair,
Whenever his steps were echoing
From here to the you-know-where,
I tried to protect my Carolyn
Who would shut her eyes and ears,
He had the power, for over an hour
To bring Carolyn to tears.
He’d come when the frost brought icicles
He’d come when the wind would blow,
He’d come when I left her tricycle
Outside, and covered in snow,
And then when the ice on the window ledge
Began to go crack-crack-crack,
She often hid, right under the lid
Where the firewood lay in a stack.
And then when the door blew open, from
A gust in the wind out there,
We’d lie, with fears unspoken
As the creaking rose up the stair,
Then Carolyn shrieked, while I couldn’t speak
For hearing her cries and moans,
As terror spread, from under the bed
And chattered through teeth and bones.
I swore that he wore a ******* hat
With a brim that covered his eyes,
Carolyn wrote that he wore a cloak
As part of his dread disguise,
But nobody would believe us, ‘til
We heard he was coming back,
His hobnailed boots on the cobblestones
Approached, a-click and a-clack.
They’d slow, and stop by the outer door
Our hearts in our mouths, alas,
And then his shadow would fall right there
He’d peer through the frosted glass,
The knocker had an echoing sound
As he knocked, went rat-tat-tat,
And mother leapt to the door in a bound,
‘Dear God! It’s Uncle Jack!’
David Lewis Paget
