Have you ever heard the wind go ‘Yoooo’?
It’s a frightful sound to hear!
It seems to chill you through and through
with a strange and speechless fear.
It’s the voice of the night that broods outside
when folks should be asleep,
and so many a times I’ve cried
to the darkness spreading far and wide
over the land and the deep:
“What do you want, lonely night,
That you wail the long hours through?”
And the night would say in its ghostly way:
‘Yoooo!’

My grandmother told me long ago
(when I was a little tad)
that when the night went wailing so,
somebody had been bad.
And then when I was snug in bed,
where I had been sent,
with the blankets pulled up over my head,
I’d think of what grandmother said,
and wonder what child she meant!
“Who’s been bad today?” I’d ask
of the wind that hoarsely blew
and the voice would say in it’s meaningful way:
‘Yoooo!’

That this was true I must allow –
You’ll not believe it though!
Yes, though I’m quite a model now,
I was not always so.
And if you doubt what things I say,
suppose you make the test.
Suppose, when you’ve been bad someday
and up to bed are sent away
from mother and the rest-
Suppose you ask “Who has been bad?”
And then you’ll hear what’s true:
For the wind will moan in its most rueful tone:
‘Yoooo!’