Hark! Hark to the wind! 'Tis the night, they say, When all souls come back from the far away- The dead, forgotten this many a day!

The speaker listens to the wind as if it were a messenger from the unseen world, announcing a night when boundaries between the living and the dead thin. The exclamatory “Hark!” creates an oral, ballad-like immediacy, while the phrasing “they say” frames the belief as communal folklore rather than doctrine. The lines evoke a seasonal or ritual moment (often associated with nights of remembrance) in which even the “dead, forgotten” return—suggesting that memory is not solely the property of the living, and that neglect does not erase the claims of the past. The mood is eerie but also elegiac, emphasizing persistence of the departed in atmosphere, story, and conscience.