Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology

Home > Horror > Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology > Page 142
Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology Page 142

by H. P. Lovecraft


  Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change

  That tore from the past its own

  Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow’r

  Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne

  And looses the vast unknown.

  So here again stretch the vale and plain

  That moons long-forgotten saw,

  And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,

  Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw

  To shake all the world with awe.

  And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,

  The ugliness and the pest

  Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,

  Shall some day be with the rest,

  And brood with the shades unblest.

  Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,

  And the leprous spires ascend;

  For new and old alike in the fold

  Of horror and death are penn’d,

  For the hounds of Time to rend.

  The Wood

  Written: January 1929

  First Published: The Tryout,

  Vol. 11, No. 2 (January 1929), Page 16

  They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles

  Of forest night had hid eternal things,

  They scal’d the sky with tow’rs and marble piles

  To make a city for their revellings.

  White and amazing to the lands around

  That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose;

  Crystal and ivory, sublimely crown’d

  With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows.

  And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang,

  While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains;

  Never a voice of elder marvels sang,

  Nor any eye call’d up the hills and plains.

  Thus down the years, till on one purple night

  A drunken minstrel in his careless verse

  Spoke the vile words that should not see the light,

  And stirr’d the shadows of an ancient curse.

  Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield;

  So on the spot where that proud city stood,

  The shuddering dawn no single stone reveal’d,

  But fled the blackness of a primal wood.

  The Outpost

  Written: 26th November 1929

  First Published: Bacon’s Essays,

  Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1930), Page 7

  When evening cools the yellow stream,

  And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways,

  Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablaze

  For a great King who fears to dream.

  For he alone of all mankind

  Waded the swamp that serpents shun;

  And struggling toward the setting sun,

  Came on the veldt that lies behind.

  No other eyes had vented there

  Since eyes were lent for human sight—

  But there, as sunset turned to night,

  He found the Elder Secret’s lair.

  Strange turrets rose beyond the plain,

  And walls and bastions spread around

  The distant domes that fouled the ground

  Like leprous fungi after rain.

  A grudging moon writhed up to shine

  Past leagues where life can have no home;

  And paling far-off tower and dome,

  Shewed each unwindowed and malign.

  Then he who in his boyhood ran

  Through vine-hung ruins free of fear,

  Trembled at what he saw—for here

  Was no dead, ruined seat of man.

  Inhuman shapes, half-seen, half-guessed,

  Half solid and half ether-spawned,

  Seethed down from starless voids that yawned

  In heav’n, to these blank walls of pest.

  And voidward from that pest-mad zone

  Amorphous hordes seethed darkly back,

  Their dim claws laden with the wrack

  Of things that men have dreamed and known.

  The ancient Fishers from Outside—

  Were there not tales the high-priest told,

  Of how they found the worlds of old,

  And took what pelf their fancy spied?

  Their hidden, dread-ringed outposts brood

  Upon a million worlds of space;

  Abhorred by every living race,

  Yet scatheless in their solitude.

  Sweating with fright, the watcher crept

  Back to the swamp that serpents shun,

  So that he lay, by rise of sun,

  Safe in the palace where he slept.

  None saw him leave, or come at dawn,

  Nor does his flesh bear any mark

  Of what he met in that curst dark—

  Yet from his sleep all peace has gone.

  When evening cools the yellow stream,

  And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways,

  Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablaze,

  For a great King who fears to dream.

  The Ancient Track

  Written: 26th November 1929

  First Published: Weird Tales,

  Vol. 15, No. 3 (March 1930), Page 300

  There was no hand to hold me back

  That night I found the ancient track

  Over the hill, and strained to see

  The fields that teased my memory.

  This tree, that wall—I knew them well,

  And all the roofs and orchards fell

  Familiarly upon my mind

  As from a past not far behind.

  I knew what shadows would be cast

  When the late moon came up at last

  From back of Zaman’s Hill, and how

  The vale would shine three hours from now.

  And when the path grew steep and high,

  And seemed to end against the sky,

  I had no fear of what might rest

  Beyond that silhouetted crest.

  Straight on I walked, while all the night

  Grew pale with phosphorescent light,

  And wall and farmhouse gable glowed

  Unearthly by the climbing road.

  There was the milestone that I knew—

  “Two miles to Dunwich”—now the view

  Of distant spire and roofs would dawn

  With ten more upward paces gone…

  There was no hand to hold me back

  That night I found the ancient track,

  And reached the crest to see outspread

  A valley of the lost and dead:

  And over Zaman’s Hill the horn

  Of a malignant moon was born,

  To light the weeds and vines that grew

  On ruined walls I never knew.

  The fox-fire glowed in field and bog,

  And unknown waters spewed a fog

  Whose curling talons mocked the thought

  That I had ever known this spot.

  Too well I saw from the mad scene

  That my loved past had never been—

  Nor was I now upon the trail

  Descending to that long-dead vale.

  Around was fog—ahead, the spray

  Of star-streams in the Milky Way…

  There was no hand to hold me back

  That night I found the ancient track.

  The Messenger

  Written: 30th November 1929

  First Published: Weird Tales,

  Vol. 32, No. 1 (July 1938), Page 52

  To Bertrand K. Hart, Esq.

  The thing, he said, would come that night at three

  From the old churchyard on the hill below;

  But crouching by an oak fire’s wholesome glow,

  I tried to tell myself it could not be.

  Surely, I mused, it was a pleasantry

  Devised by one who did not truly know

  The Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago,

  That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free.

  He had not m
eant it—no—but still I lit

  Another lamp as starry Leo climbed

  Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed

  Three—and the firelight faded, bit by bit.

  Then at the door that cautious rattling came—

  And the mad truth devoured me like a flame!

  This was written in response to Bertrand Kelton Hart, author of a daily column called “The Sideshow” in the Providence Journal, who, upon discovering that Wilcox's residence in “The Call of Cthulhu” (7 Thomas Street) was his own, published in his column “…I shall not be happy until, joining league with wraiths and ghouls, I have plumped down at least one large and abiding ghost by way of reprisal upon [Lovecraft's] own doorstep in Barnes street… I think I shall teach it to moan in a minor dissonance every morning at 3 o'clock sharp, with a clinking of chains.”

  Nathicana

  Written: ?

  First Published: The Vagrant,

  (Spring 1927), Pages 61-64

  It was in the pale garden of Zaïs;

  The mist-shrouded gardens of Zaïs,

  Where blossoms the white nephalotë,

  The redolent herald of midnight.

  There slumber the still lakes of crystal,

  And streamlets that flow without murm’ring;

  Smooth streamlets from caverns of Kathos

  Where brood the calm spirits of twilight.

  And over the lakes and the streamlets

  Are bridges of pure alabaster,

  White bridges all cunningly carven

  With figures of fairies and daemons.

  Here glimmer strange suns and strange planets,

  And strange is the crescent Banapis

  That sets ’yond the ivy-grown ramparts

  Where thickens the dust of the evening.

  Here fall the white vapours of Yabon;

  And here in the swirl of vapours

  I saw the divine Nathicana;

  The garlanded, white Nathicana;

  The slender, black-hair’d Nathicana;

  The sloe-ey’d, red-lipp’d Nathicana;

  The silver-voic’d, sweet Nathicana;

  The pale-rob’d, belov’d Nathicana.

  And ever was she my belovèd,

  From ages when Time was unfashion’d;

  From days when the stars were not fashion’d

  Nor any thing fashion’d but Yabon.

  And here dwelt we ever and ever,

  The innocent children of Zaïs,

  At peace in the paths and the arbours,

  White-crown’d with the blest nephalotë.

  How oft would we float in the twilight

  O’er flow’r-cover’d pastures and hillsides

  All white with the lowly astalthon;

  The lowly yet lovely astalthon,

  And dream in a world made of dreaming

  The dreams that are fairer than Aidenn;

  Bright dreams that are truer than reason!

  So dream’d and so lov’d we thro’ ages,

  Till came the curs’d season of Dzannin;

  The daemon-damn’d season of Dzannin;

  When red shone the suns and the planets,

  And red gleamed the crescent Banapis,

  And red fell the vapours of Yabon.

  Then redden’d the blossoms and streamlets

  And lakes that lay under the bridges,

  And even the calm alabaster

  Glow’d pink with uncanny reflections

  Till all the carv’d fairies and daemons

  Leer’d redly from the backgrounds of shadow.

  Now redden’d my vision, and madly

  I strove to peer thro’ the dense curtain

  And glimpse the divine Nathicana;

  The pure, ever-pale Nathicana;

  The lov’d, the unchang’d Nathicana.

  But vortex on vortex of madness

  Beclouded my labouring vision;

  My damnable, reddening vision

  That built a new world for my seeing;

  A new world of redness and darkness,

  A horrible coma call’d living.

  So now in this coma call’d living

  I view the bright phantons of beauty;

  The false, hollow phantoms of beauty

  That cloak all the evils of Dzannin.

  I view them with infinite longing,

  So like do they seem to my lov’d one;

  So shapely and fair like my lov’d one;

  Yet foul from their eyes shines their evil;

  Their cruel and pitiless evil,

  More evil than Thaphron and Latgoz,

  Twice ill for its gorgeous concealment.

  And only in slumbers of midnight

  Appears the lost maid Nathicana,

  The pallid, the pure Nathicana,

  Who fades at the glance of the dreamer.

  Again and again do I seek her;

  I woo with deep draughts of Plathotis,

  Deep draughts brew’d in wine of Astarte

  And strengthen’d with tears of long weeping.

  I yearn for the gardens of Zaïs;

  The lovely lost garden of Zaïs

  Where blossoms the white nephalotë,

  The redolent herald of midnight.

  The last potent draught I am brewing;

  A draught that the daemons delight in;

  A draught that will banish the redness;

  The horrible coma call’d living.

  Soon, soon, if I fail not in brewing,

  The redness and madness will vanish,

  And deep in the worm-peopled darkness

  Will rot the base chains that hav bound me.

  Once more shall the gardens of Zaïs

  Dawn white on my long-tortur’d vision,

  And there midst the vapours of Yabon

  Will stand the divine Nathicana;

  The deathless, restor’d Nathicana

  Whose like is not met with in living.

  In a letter to Donald Wandrei written August 2nd, 1927, Lovecraft said that this poem was supposed to be a “parody on those stylistic excesses which really have no basic meaning”.

  In his response ten days later, Wandrei said “It is a rare and curious kind of literary freak, a satire too good, so that, instead of parodying, it possesses, the original”.

  Fungi from Yuggoth

  Written: 27th December 1929-4th January 1930

  First Published: Beyond the Wall of Sleep.

  Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, (1943), Pages 395-407

  I. The Book

  The place was dark and dusty and half-lost

  In tangles of old alleys near the quays,

  Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,

  And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.

  Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,

  Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,

  Rotting from floor to roof—congeries

  Of crumbling elder lore at little cost.

  I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap

  Took up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,

  Trembling at curious words that seemed to keep

  Some secret, monstrous if one only knew.

  Then, looking for some seller old in craft,

  I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.

  II. Pursuit

  I held the book beneath my coat, at pains

  To hide the thing from sight in such a place;

  Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanes

  With often-turning head and nervous pace.

  Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brick

  Peered at me oddly as I hastened by,

  And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sick

  For a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.

  No one had seen me take the thing—but still

  A blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,

  And I could guess what nighted worlds of ill


  Lurked in that volume I had coveted.

  The way grew strange—the walls alike and madding—

  And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.

  III. The Key

  I do not know what windings in the waste

  Of those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,

  But on my porch I trembled, white with haste

  To get inside and bolt the heavy door.

  I had the book that told the hidden way

  Across the void and through the space-hung screens

  That hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,

  And keep lost aeons to their own demesnes.

  At last the key was mine to those vague visions

  Of sunset spires and twilight woods that brood

  Dim in the gulfs beyond this earth’s precisions,

  Lurking as memories of infinitude.

  The key was mine, but as I sat there mumbling,

  The attic window shook with a faint fumbling.

  IV. Recognition

  The day had come again, when as a child

  I saw—just once—that hollow of old oaks,

  Grey with a ground-mist that enfolds and chokes

  The slinking shapes which madness has defiled.

  It was the same—an herbage rank and wild

  Clings round an altar whose carved sign invokes

  That Nameless One to whom a thousand smokes

  Rose, aeons gone, from unclean towers up-piled.

  I saw the body spread on that dank stone,

  And knew those things which feasted were not men;

  I knew this strange, grey world was not my own,

  But Yuggoth, past the starry voids—and then

  The body shrieked at me with a dead cry,

  And all too late I knew that it was I!

  V. Homecoming

  The daemon said that he would take me home

  To the pale, shadowy land I half recalled

  As a high place of stair and terrace, walled

  With marble balustrades that sky-winds comb,

  While miles below a maze of dome on dome

  And tower on tower beside a sea lies sprawled.

  Once more, he told me, I would stand enthralled

  On those old heights, and hear the far-off foam.

  All this he promised, and through sunset’s gate

  He swept me, past the lapping lakes of flame,

  And red-gold thrones of gods without a name

  Who shriek in fear at some impending fate.

  Then a black gulf with sea-sounds in the night:

  “Here was your home,” he mocked, “when you had sight!”

 

‹ Prev