Ghosts

At the end of last year I wrote another song for my songwriting class. The theme was 'ghosts'. I wrote a kind of historical murder ballad. Here are the unfinished lyrics:

The Ghost of Frederick Isaac Gold

Wandering...
Down the dusty, disused line
Crumbling...
Down the bridges over time
And time didn't register
In the field where he was thrown
Left to crawl back on his own
He never made it home
Oh no

Shimmering...
Over streams like Damselflys
Wallowing...
Under cloudless late July
He hit the ground struggling
Tried to keep his timepiece gold
Left a childless widow cold
Poor Frederick Isaac Gold
Oh no

Sleeping his way through the tunnel
Shot to the floor with a tumble
Thrown from the carriage a bundle of bones

Stumbling...
Cause his feet won't touch the ground
Hollering...
Though his cries don't make a sound
And people walk through him now
In the street where he was born
Worked the chandlers for their corn
But now that it's all gone
Oh no

Hovering...
Over cornfields dressed in gold
Wondering...
What the next life's gonna hold

It's loosely based on a story I read about that happened close to Brighton in the 1890s. A petty criminal shot a wealthy, somewhat miserly gentleman on the train from London. He put up a struggle but was eventually pushed from the train in Balcombe Tunnel. It was in the middle of the summer.

My idea was to tell the story of a ghost haunting summer fields where he was pretty ineffectual, the same as he was when he was alive. But I don't really think this comes across in the lyrics I've written. I don't know... I'm just not happy with it. Maybe some tweaks would make it come alive a bit.