The Complete H.P. Lovecraft Collection (Xist Classics)

by H. P. Lovecraft

  What things beyond the star-gulfs lurk and leer.

  Dark Lord of Averoigne—whose windows stare

  On pits of dream no other gaze could bear!

  To Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett,

  Eighteenth Baron Dunsany

  As when the sun above a dusky wold

  Springs into sight, and turns the gloom to gold,

  Lights with his magic beams the dew-deck’d bow’rs,

  And wakes to life the gay responsive flow’rs;

  So now o’er realms where dark’ning dulness lies,

  In solar state see shining Plunkett rise!

  Monarch of Fancy! whose ethereal mind

  Mounts fairy peaks, and leaves the throng behind;

  Whose soul untainted bursts the bounds of space,

  And leads to regions of supernal grace;

  Can any praise thee with too strong a tone,

  Who in this age of folly gleam’st alone?

  Thy quill, Dunsany, with an art divine

  Recalls the gods to each deserted shrine;

  From mystic air a novel pantheon makes,

  And with new spirits fills the meads and brakes;

  With thee we wander thro’ primeval bow’rs,

  For thou hast brought earth’s childhood back, and ours!

  How leaps the soul, with sudden bliss increas’d,

  When led by thee to lands beyond the East!

  Sick of this sphere, in crime and conflict old,

  We yearn for wonders distant and untold;

  O’er Homer’s page a second time we pore,

  And rack our brains for gleams of infant lore:

  But all in vain—for valiant tho’ we strive

  No common means these pictures can revive.

  Then dawns Dunsany with celestial light,

  And fulgent visions break upon our sight:

  His barque enchanted each sad spirit bears

  To shores of gold, beyond the reach of cares.

  No earthly trammels now our thoughts may chain;

  For childhood’s fancy hath come back again!

  What glitt’ring worlds now wait our eager eyes!

  What roads untrodden beckon thro’ the skies!

  Wonders on wonders line the gorgeous ways,

  And glorious vistas greet the ravish’d gaze;

  Mountains of clouds, castles of crystal dreams,

  Ethereal cities and Elysian streams;

  Temples of blue, where myriad stars adore

  Forgotten gods of aeons gone before!

  Such are thine arts, Dunsany, such thy skill,

  That scarce terrestrial seems thy moving quill;

  Can man, and man alone, successful draw

  Such scenes of wonder and domains of awe?

  Our hearts, enraptur’d, fix thy mind’s abode

  In high Pegāna; hail thee as a god;

  And sure, can aught more high or godlike be

  Than such a fancy as resides in thee?

  Delighted Pan a friend and peer perceives

  As thy sweet music stirs the sylvan leaves;

  The Nine, transported, bless thy golden lyre,

  Approve thy fancy, and applaud thy fire;

  Whilst Jove himself assumes a brother’s tone,

  And vows the pantheon equal to his own.

  Dunsany, may thy days be glad and long;

  Replete with visions, and atune with song;

  May thy rare notes increasing millions cheer,

  Thy name beloved, and thy mem’ry dear!

  ’Tis thou who hast in hours of dulness brought

  New charms of language, and new gems of thought;

  Hast with a poet’s grace enrich’d the earth

  With aureate dreams as noble as thy birth.

  Grateful we name thee, bright with fix’d renown,

  The fairest jewel in Hibernia’s crown.

  Unda; or, The Bride of the Sea

  Respectfully Dedicated with Permission to MAURICE WINTER MOE, Esq.

  A Dull, Dark, Drear, Dactylic Delirium in Sixteen Silly, Senseless, Sickly Stanzas

  “Ego, canus, lunam cano.”

  —Maevius Bavianus

  Black loom the crags of the uplands behind me;

  Dark are the sands of the far-stretching shore.

  Dim are the pathways and rocks that remind me

  Sadly of years in the lost nevermore.

  Soft laps the ocean on wave-polish’d boulder;

  Sweet is the sound and familiar to me.

  Here, with her head gently bent to my shoulder,

  Walk’d I with Unda, the Bride of the Sea.

  Bright was the morn of my youth when I met her,

  Sweet as the breeze that blew in o’er the brine.

  Swift was I captur’d in Love’s strongest fetter,

  Glad to be hers, and she glad to be mine.

  Never a question ask’d I where she wander’d,

  Never a question ask’d she of my birth:

  Happy as children, we thought not nor ponder’d,

  Glad with the bounty of ocean and earth.

  Once when the moonlight play’d soft ’mid the billows,

  High on the cliff o’er the waters we stood,

  Bound was her hair with a garland of willows,

  Pluck’d by the fount in the bird-haunted wood.

  Strangely she gaz’d on the surges beneath her,

  Charm’d by the sound or entranc’d by the light.

  Then did the waves a wild aspect bequeath her,

  Stern as the ocean and weird as the night.

  Coldly she left me, astonish’d and weeping,

  Standing alone ’mid the regions she bless’d:

  Down, ever downward, half gliding, half creeping,

  Stole the sweet Unda in oceanward quest.

  Calm grew the sea, and tumultuous beating

  Turn’d to a ripple, as Unda the fair

  Trod the wet sands in affectionate greeting,

  Beckon’d to me, and no longer was there!

  Long did I pace by the banks where she vanish’d:

  High climb’d the moon, and descended again.

  Grey broke the dawn till the sad night was banish’d,

  Still ach’d my soul with its infinite pain.

  All the wide world have I search’d for my darling,

  Scour’d the far deserts and sail’d distant seas.

  Once on the wave while the tempest was snarling,

  Flash’d a fair face that brought quiet and ease.

  Ever in restlessness onward I stumble,

  Seeking and pining, scarce heeding my way.

  Now have I stray’d where the wide waters rumble,

  Back to the scene of the lost yesterday.

  Lo! the red moon from the ocean’s low hazes

  Rises in ominous grandeur to view.

  Strange is its face as my tortur’d eye gazes

  O’er the vast reaches of sparkle and blue.

  Straight from the moon to the shore where I’m sighing

  Grows a bright bridge, made of wavelets and beams.

  Frail may it be, yet how simple the trying;

  Wand’ring from earth to the orb of sweet dreams.

  What is yon face in the moonlight appearing;

  Have I at last found the maiden that fled?

  Out on the beam-bridge my footsteps are nearing

  Her whose sweet beckoning hastens my tread.

  Currents surround me, and drowsily swaying,

  Far on the moon-path I seek the sweet face.

  Eagerly hasting, half panting, half praying,

  Forward I reach for the vision of grace.

  Murmuring waters about me are closing,

  Soft the sweet vision advances to me:

  Done are my trials; my heart is reposing

  Safe with my Unda, the Bride of the Sea.

  Epilogue

  As the rash fool, a prey of Unda’s art,

  Drown thro’ the passion of his f
ever’d heart,

  So are our youth, inflam’d by tempters fair,

  Bereft of reason and the manly air.

  How sad the sight of Strephon’s virile grace

  Turn’d to confusion at his Chloë’s face,

  And e’er Pelides, dear to Grecian eyes,

  Sulking for loss of his thrice-cherish’d prize.

  Brothers, attend! If cares too sharply vex,

  Gain rest by shunning the destructive sex!

  Waste Paper

  A Poem of Profound Insignificance

  Πἀντα γἐλως καἱ πἀντα κὀνις καἱ πἀντα τὁ μηδἐν

  Out of the reaches of illimitable light

  The blazing planet grew, and forc’d to life

  Unending cycles of progressive strife

  And strange mutations of undying light

  And boresome books, than hell’s own self more trite

  And thoughts repeated and become a blight,

  And cheap rum-hounds with moonshine hootch made tight,

  And quite contrite to see the flight of fright so bright

  I used to ride my bicycle in the night

  With a dandy acetylene lantern that cost $3.00

  In the evening, by the moonlight, you can hear those darkies singing

  Meet me tonight in dreamland . . . BAH

  I used to sit on the stairs of the house where I was born

  After we left it but before it was sold

  And play on a zobo with two other boys.

  We called ourselves the Blackstone Military Band

  Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come home?

  In the spring of the year, in the silver rain

  When petal by petal the blossoms fall

  And the mocking birds call

  And the whippoorwill sings, Marguerite.

  The first cinema show in our town opened in 1906

  At the old Olympic, which was then call’d Park,

  And moving beams shot weirdly thro’ the dark

  And spit tobacco seldom hit the mark.

  Have you read Dickens’ American Notes?

  My great-great-grandfather was born in a white house

  Under green trees in the country

  And he used to believe in religion and the weather.

  “Shantih, shantih, shantih” . . . Shanty House

  Was the name of a novel by I forget whom

  Published serially in the All-Story Weekly

  Before it was a weekly. Advt.

  Disillusion is wonderful, I’ve been told,

  And I take quinine to stop a cold

  But it makes my ears ring . . . always ring . . .

  Always ringing in my ears . . .

  It is the ghost of the Jew I murdered that Christmas day

  Because he played “Three O’Clock in the Morning” in the flat above me.

  Three O’Clock in the morning, I’ve danc’d the whole night through,

  Dancing on the graves in the graveyard

  Where life is buried; life and beauty

  Life and art and love and duty

  Ah, there, sweet cutie.

  Stung!

  Out of the night that covers me

  Black as the pit from pole to pole

  I never quote things straight except by accident.

  Sophistication! Sophistication!

  You are the idol of our nation

  Each fellow has

  Fallen for jazz

  And we’ll give the past a merry razz

  Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber

  And fellow-guestship with the glutless worm.

  Next stop is 57th St.—57th St. the next stop.

  Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring,

  And the Governor-General of Canada is Lord Byng

  Whose ancestor was shot or hung,

  I forget which, the good die young.

  Here’s to your ripe old age,

  Copyright, 1847, by Joseph Miller,

  Entered according to act of Congress

  In the office of the librarian of Congress

  America was discovered in 1492

  This way out.

  No, lady, you gotta change at Washington St. to the Everett train.

  Out in the rain on the elevated

  Crated, sated, all mismated.

  Twelve seats on this bench,

  How quaint.

  In a shady nook, beside a brook, two lovers stroll along.

  Express to Park Ave., Car Following.

  No, we had it cleaned with the sand blast.

  I know it ought to be torn down.

  Before the bar of a saloon there stood a reckless crew,

  When one said to another, “Jack, this message came for you.”

  “It may be from a sweetheart, boys,” said someone in the crowd,

  And here the words are missing . . . but Jack cried out aloud:

  “It’s only a message from home, sweet home,

  From loved ones down on the farm

  Fond wife and mother, sister and brother. . . .”

  Bootleggers all and you’re another

  In the shade of the old apple tree

  ’Neath the old cherry tree sweet Marie

  The Conchologist’s First Book

  By Edgar Allan Poe

  Stubbed his toe

  On a broken brick that didn’t shew

  Or a banana peel

  In the fifth reel

  By George Creel

  It is to laugh

  And quaff

  It makes you stout and hale,

  And all my days I’ll sing the praise

  Of Ivory Soap

  Have you a little T. S. Eliot in your home?

  The stag at eve had drunk his fill

  The thirsty hart look’d up the hill

  And craned his neck just as a feeler

  To advertise the Double-Dealer.

  William Congreve was a gentleman

  O art what sins are committed in thy name

  For tawdry fame and fleeting flame

  And everything, ain’t dat a shame?

  Mah Creole Belle, ah lubs yo’ well;

  Aroun’ mah heart you hab cast a spell

  But I can’t learn to spell pseudocracy

  Because there ain’t no such word.

  And I says to Lizzie, if Joe was my feller

  I’d teach him to go to dances with that

  Rat, bat, cat, hat, flat, plat, fat

  Fry the fat, fat the fry

  You’ll be a drug-store by and by.

  Get the hook!

  Above the lines of brooding hills

  Rose spires that reeked of nameless ills,

  And ghastly shone upon the sight

  In ev’ry flash of lurid light

  To be continued.

  No smoking.

  Smoking on four rear seats.

  Fare win return to 5¢ after August 1st

  Except outside the Cleveland city limits.

  In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir

  Strangers pause to shed a tear;

  Henry Fielding wrote Tom Jones.

  And cursed be he that moves my bones.

  Good night, good night, the stars are bright

  I saw the Leonard-Tendler fight

  Farewell, farewell, O go to hell.

  Nobody home

  In the shantih.

  The Wood

  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.

  Essays: The Allowable Rhyme

  “Sed ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis

  Offendar maculis.”

  —Horace.

  The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the proprieties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school, constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

  The rational contemporary disciple of the Nine, justly ignoring the dissonant shrieks of the radicals, is therefore confronted with a grave choice of technique. May he retain the liberties of imperfect or “allowable” rhyming which were enjoyed by his ancestors, or must he conform to the new ideals of perfection evolved during the past century? The writer of this article is frankly an archaist in verse. He has not scrupled to rhyme “toss’d” with “coast”, “come” with “Rome”, or “home” with “gloom” in his very latest published efforts, thereby proclaiming his maintenance of the old-fashioned poets as models; but sound modern criticism, proceeding from Mr. Rheinhart Kleiner and from other sources which must needs command respect, has impelled him here to rehearse the question for public benefit, and particularly to present his own side, attempting to justify his adherence to the style of two centuries ago.

  The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere “assonance” rather than that of actual rhyme. Thus in the original ballad of “Chevy-Chase”, we encounter “King” and “within” supposedly rhymed, whilst in the similar “Battle of Otterbourne” we behold “long” rhymed with “down”, “ground” with “Agurstonne”, and “name” with “again”. In the ballad of “Sir Patrick Spense”, “morn” and “storm”, and “deep” and “feet” are rhymed. But the infelicities were obviously the result not of artistic negligence, but of plebeian ignorance, since the old ballads were undoubtedly the careless products of a peasant minstrelsy. In Chaucer, a poet of the Court, the allowable rhyme is but infrequently discovered, hence we may assume that the original ideal in English verse was the perfect rhyming sound.