We heard a wild and mournful groan
Come rumbling down the tunnelled way;
A voice, an awful mournful bray,
Singing some old funereal lay;
Then solemn footsteps, muffled, dull,
Approached as if they trod on wool,
And as they nearer, nearer drew,
We saw our Host was listening too!

His bulging eyes began to glow
Like great red match-heads rubbed at night,
And then he stole with a grim "O-ho!"
To that grey old wicket where, out of sight,
Blandly rubbing his hands and humming,
He could see, at one glance, whatever was coming.

He had never been so jubilant or frolicsome before,
As he scurried on his cruel hairy crutches to the door;
And flung it open wide
And most hospitably cried,
"Won't you walk into my parlour? I've some little friends to tea,--
They'll be highly entertaining to a man of sympathy,
Such as you yourself must be!"

Then the man, for so he seemed,
(Doubtless one who'd lost his way
And was dwarfed as we had been!)
In his ancient suit of black,
Black upon the verge of green,
Entered like a ghost that dreamed
Sadly of some bygone day;
And he never ceased to sing
In that awful mournful bray.

The door closed behind his back;
He walked round us in a ring,
And we hoped that he might free us,
But his tears appeared to blind him,
For he didn't seem to see us,
And the Hermit crept behind him
Like a cat about to spring.

And the song he sang was this;
And his nose looked very grand
As he sang it, with a bliss
Which we could not understand;
For his voice was very sad,
While his nose was proud and glad.

_Rain, April, rain, thy sunny, sunny tears!
Through the black boughs the robe of Spring appears,
Yet, for the ghosts of all the bygone years,
Rain, April, rain._

_Rain, April, rain; the rose will soon be glad;
Spring will rejoice, a Spring I, too, have had;
A little while, till I no more be sad,
Rain, April, rain._

And then the spider sprang
Before we could breathe or speak,
And one great scream out-rang
As the terrible horny beak
Crunched into the Sad Man's head,
And the terrible hairy claws
Clutched him around his middle;
And he opened his lantern-jaws,
And