There is a moment, the old ones knew, when the dead draw near their corpses as the mourners stand watch at a wake. And then those dead must trudge down the road of judgment: across the bleak gorse moor and over the Bridge of Dread. If you gave socks and shoes to the poor in life, you will find there socks and shoes to wear. If not, the gorse will tear your feet, the fires burn your limbs, and judgment gnaw at your bones. May Christ receive your soul.

For Halloween, what better than the “Lyke-Wake Dirge”? A 15th-century Purgatory song in the Yorkshire dialect of English, the poem is unrelenting in its spookiness. “Lyke” is an old word for corpse, and “whinny-muir” a name for a moor on which the rough thorny gorse alone grows. “Fleet” is trickier, in the oft-quoted line “Fire and fleet and candle-lighte”: perhaps a miswriting for “sleet” (since scripted F’s and S’s looked similar) but more likely an old word, related to words for “floor,” gesturing toward the indoor comforts of home. From such almost-understood words, the song builds:

From Whinny-muir when thou may’st pass,
            — Every nighte and alle,
To Brig o’ Dread thou com’st at last;
           And Christe receive thy saule.

And the mourners cower in terror of death and judgment.

Lyke-Wake Dirge
by unknown

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
    — Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
    And Christe receive thy saule.

When thou from hence away art past,
To Whinny-muir thou com’st at last;

If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
Sit thee down and put them on;

If hosen and shoon thou ne’er gav’st nane
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane;

From Whinny-muir when thou may’st pass,
To Brig o’ Dread thou com’st at last;

From Brig o’ Dread when thou may’st pass,
To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last;

If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;

If meat or drink thou ne’er gav’st nane,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
    — Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
    And Christe receive thy saule.

___________________________________________ 

With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.