Tis the night—the night Of the grave's delight, And the warlocks are at their play; Ye think that without, The wild winds shout, But no, it is they—it is they!

The stanza conjures a Gothic, supernatural nightscape in which ordinary natural phenomena (the “wild winds” shouting outside) are reinterpreted as the revelry of “warlocks.” The speaker corrects the listener’s rational assumption—“Ye think…But no”—to heighten dread and suggest that the world is more haunted than it appears. “The grave’s delight” personifies death as actively celebratory, collapsing the boundary between the living and the dead and implying a cosmos where malign forces take pleasure in human fear. The sing-song rhyme and refrain (“it is they—it is they!”) intensify the incantatory, ballad-like quality, mimicking the very spellcraft the poem describes.