Margaret Widdemer - Haunted Hour; an anthology

I have not considered as ghost-poems anything but poems which related to the return of spirits to earth. They «The Blessed Damozel,» a poem of spirits in heaven, «La Belle Dame Sans Merci,» whose heroine may be a fairy or witch, and whose ghosts are presented in dream only, do not belong in this classification; nor do such poems as Mathilde Blind's lovely sonnet, «The Dead Are Ever with Us,» class as ghost-poems; for in these the dead are living in ourselves in a half-metaphorical sense. If a poem would be a ghost-story, in short, I have considered it a ghost-poem, not otherwise. (Excerpt by Margaret Widdemer)