(Read notes first)

On a day so bold,
Where the wind was cold,
And the crows would sing to the dead,
It’s an evil day,
As the old bards say,
When their tales get into your head.

'Twas the first of June
Under blood-red moon
With all heat sucked out of the air.
Ground shivered, they said,
As the waking dead
Seeped out of the earth everywhere.

When the banshees scream
It is not a dream
And the smart ones remain inside.
But it isn’t fair
For those unaware
To be caught in torment as they died.

Vicious hunger reigns
For innocent brains
And the taste of red-blooded flesh.
You can hear their moans
And the rattling bones
As they crawl like a hoard through the bush.

As the village sleep,
The dead slowly creep
To the edge. They can smell mortal souls.
One would go insane,
If they saw that plain
So filled with that mass of dead ghouls.

But this tale completes
In the darkened streets
With Town Cryer completing rounds.
Spots the seething mass
Hiding in the grass, 
And hears their unearthly, cruel sounds.

Cryer seeing thus,
Begged St. Erasmus
Pray to release St. Elmo’s fire.
Then hot burning sparks,
In wide branching arcs,
Unleashed from the church’s tall spire.

With a crackling sound,
Set flames all around,
Consuming the dead where they came.
As the story goes,
Salamanders rose,
To dance and cavort in the flames.

Dead back in their place,
Through heavenly grace,
Under tombstones ashes now stay.
And the place discerns,
That summer returns
When the murder of crows fly away.