Ghosts Are Running

A pale boy in medical school
Saw a play with John Wilkes Booth
Spent his days with specimens
Calipers and lens
A green-skinned youth in waking dream
Brought him right down to his knees
Tried gaseous baths in Germany
Chloroform to sleep

Rheumatism, neuralgia, gout
Treatments of electric shock
Pain in stomach, bowels, and back
Still he willed himself on

Ghosts are running
Behind the walls
Ghosts are running
Down the hall
Ghosts are running
Hear their call
As you sit by the fire

In the basement at midnight
A sitting held by candlelight
She put a letter to her head
Who's author was long dead
Her lips began to speak his mind
"William, oh, son of mine
The book I wrote that no one read
Foretold what's ahead

In the study at your desk
As you search for the truth
Spirits crowding all around
Barely hidden from view"

Ghosts are running
Behind the walls
Ghosts are running
Down the hall
Ghosts are running
Hear their call
As you sit by the fire

He stood before a crowded hall
Told how the soul sick hear a call
Just beyond a filmy screen
Other ways to see

Darwin, Hegel, Whitman, and Kant
Notebooks towering high
Streams of prose pouring out
Though his eyes were half blind

Ghosts are running
Behind the walls
Ghosts are running
Down the hall
Ghosts are running
Hear their call
As you sit by the fire
And push and perspire alone