Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated)

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Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated) Page 214

by H. P. Lovecraft

Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

  But the stream of Time, swift flowing,

  Brings the torment of half-knowing —

  Dimly rushing, blindly going

  Past the never-trodden lea;

  And the voyager, repining,

  Sees the wicked death-fires shining,

  Hears the wicked petrel’s whining

  As he helpless drifts to sea.

  Evil wings in ether beating;

  Vultures at the spirit eating;

  Things unseen forever fleeting

  Black against the leering sky.

  Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,

  Clawing fiends of future sadness,

  Mingle in a cloud of madness

  Ever on the soul to lie.

  Thus the living, lone and sobbing,

  In the throes of anguish throbbing,

  With the loathsome Furies robbing

  Night and noon of peace and rest.

  But beyond the groans and grating

  Of abhorrent Life, is waiting

  Sweet Oblivion, culminating

  All the years of fruitless quest.

  Revelation

  In a vale of light and laughter,

  Shining ‘neath the friendly sun,

  Where fulfilment follow’d after

  Ev’ry hope or dream begun;

  Where an Aidenn gay and glorious,

  Beckon’d down the winsome way;

  There my soul, o’er pain victorious,

  Laugh’d and lingered — yesterday.

  Green and narrow was my valley,

  Temper’d with a verdant shade;

  Sun-deck’d brooklets musically

  Sparkled thro’ each glorious glade;

  And at night the stars serenely

  Glow’d betwixt the boughs o’erhead,

  While Astarte, calm and queenly,

  Floods of fairy radiance shed.

  There amid the tinted bowers,

  Raptur’d with the opiate spell

  Of the grasses, ferns, and flowers,

  Poppy, phlox and pimpernel,

  Long I lay, entranc’d and dreaming,

  Pleas’d with Nature’s bounteous store,

  Till I mark’d the shaded gleaming

  Of the sky, and yearn’d for more.

  Eagerly the branches tearing,

  Clear’d I all the space above,

  Till the bolder gaze, high faring,

  Scann’d the naked skies of Jove;

  Deeps unguess’d now shone before me,

  Splendid beam’d the solar car;

  Wings of fervid fancy bore me

  Out beyond the farthest star.

  Reaching, gasping, wishing, longing

  For the pageant brought to sight,

  Vain I watch’d the gold orbs thronging

  Round celestial poles of light.

  Madly on a moonbeam ladder

  Heav’n’s abyss I sought to scale,

  Ever wiser, ever sadder,

  As the fruitless task would fail.

  Then, with futile striving sated,

  Veer’d my soul to earth again,

  Well content that I was fated

  For a fair, yet low domain;

  Pleasing thoughts of glad tomorrows,

  Like the blissful moments past,

  Lull’d to rest my transient sorrows,

  Still’d my godless greed at last.

  But my downward glance, returning,

  Shrank in fright from what it spy’d;

  Slopes in hideous torment burning,

  Terror in the brooklet’s tide:

  For the dell, of shade denuded

  By my desecrating hand,

  ‘Neath the bare sky blaz’d and brooded

  As a lost, accursed land.

  The House

  ’Tis a grove-circled dwelling

  Set close to a hill,

  Where the branches are telling

  Strange legends of ill;

  Over timbers so old

  That they breathe of the dead,

  Crawl the vines, green and cold,

  By strange nourishment fed;

  And no man knows the juices they suck from the depths of their dank slimy bed.

  In the gardens are growing

  Tall blossoms and fair,

  Each pallid bloom throwing

  Perfume on the air;

  But the afternoon sun

  With its shining red rays

  Makes the picture loom dun

  On the curious gaze,

  And above the sween scent of the the blossoms rise odours of numberless days.

  The rank grasses are waving

  On terrace and lawn,

  Dim memories sav’ring

  Of things that have gone;

  The stones of the walks

  Are encrusted and wet,

  And a strange spirit stalks

  When the red sun has set,

  And the soul of the watcher is fill’d with faint pictures he fain would forget.

  It was in the hot Junetime

  I stood by that scene,

  When the gold rays of noontime

  Beat bright on the green.

  But I shiver’d with cold,

  Groping feebly for light,

  As a picture unroll’d —

  And my age-spanning sight

  Saw the time I had been there before flash like fulgury out of the night.

  The City

  It was golden and splendid,

  That City of light;

  A vision suspended

  In deeps of the night;

  A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white.

  I remember the season

  It dawn’d on my gaze;

  The mad time of unreason,

  The brain-numbing days

  When Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly, stalks onward to torture and craze.

  More lovely than Zion

  It shone in the sky,

  When the beams of Orion

  Beclouded my eye,

  Bringing sleep that was fill’d with dim mem’ries of moments obscure and gone by.

  Its mansions were stately

  With carvings made fair,

  Each rising sedately

  On terraces rare,

  And the gardens were fragrant and bright with strange miracles blossoming there.

  The avenues lur’d me

  With vistas sublime;

  Tall arches assur’d me

  That once on a time

  I had wander’d in rapture beneath them, and bask’d in the Halcyon clime.

  On the plazas were standing

  A sculptur’d array;

  Long-bearded, commanding,

  Grave men in their day —

  But one stood dismantled and broken, its bearded face batter’d away.

  In that city effulgent

  No mortal I saw;

  But my fancy, indulgent

  To memory’s law,

  Linger’d long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed their stone features with awe.

  I fann’d the faint ember

  That glow’d in my mind,

  And strove to remember

  The aeons behind;

  To rove thro’ infinity freely, and visit the past unconfin’d.

  Then the horrible warning

  Upon my soul sped

  Like the ominous morning

  That rises in red,

  And in panic I flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead.

  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 et
hereal 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 Pegna; 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.

  The Nightmare Lake

  There is a lake in distant Zan,

  Beyond the wonted haunts of man,

  Where broods alone in a hideous state

  A spirit dead and desolate;

  A spirit ancient and unholy,

  Heavy with fearsome melancholy,

  Which from the waters dull and dense

  Draws vapors cursed with pestilence.

  Around the banks, a mire of clay,

  Sprawl things offensive in decay,

  And curious birds that reach that shore

  Are seen by mortals nevermore.

  Here shines by day the searing sun

  On glassy wastes beheld by none,

  And here by night pale moonbeams flow

  Into the deeps that yawn below.

  In nightmares only is it told

  What scenes beneath those beams unfold;

  What scenes, too old for human sight,

  Lie sunken there in endless night;

  For in those depths there only pace

  The shadows of a voiceless race.

  One midnight, redolent of ill,

  I saw that lake, asleep and still;

  While in the lurid sky there rode

  A gibbous moon that glow’d and glow’d.

  I saw the stretching marshy shore,

  And the foul things those marshes bore:

  Lizards and snakes convuls’d and dying;

  Ravens and vampires putrefying;

  All these, and hov’ring o’er the dead,

  Narcophagi that on them fed.

  And as the dreadful moon climb’d high,

  Fright’ning the stars from out the sky,

  I saw the lake’s dull water glow

  Till sunken things appear’d below.

  There shone unnumber’d fathoms down,

  The tow’rs of a forgotten town;

  The tarnish’d domes and mossy walls;

  Weed-tangled spires and empty halls;

  Deserted fanes and vaults of dread,

  And streets of gold uncoveted.

  These I beheld, and saw beside

  A horde of shapeless shadows glide;

  A noxious horde which to my glance

  Seem’d moving in a hideous dance

  Round slimy sepulchres that lay

  Beside a never-travell’d way.

  Straight from those tombs a heaving rose

  That vex’d the waters’ dull repose,

  While lethal shades of upper space

  Howl’d at the moon’s sardonic face.

  Then sank the lake within its bed,

  Suck’d down to caverns of the dead,

  Till from the reeking, new-stript earth

  Curl’d foetid fumes of noisome birth.

  About the city, nigh uncover’d,

  The monstrous dancing shadows hover’d,

  When lo! there oped with sudden stir

  The portal of each sepulchre!

  No ear may learn, no tongue may tell

  What nameless horror then befell.

  I see that lake — that moon agrin —

  That city and the things within —

  Waking, I pray that on that shore

  The nightmare lake may sink no more!

  On Reading Lord Dunsany’s ‘Book of Wonder’

  The hours of night unheeded fly,

  And in the grate the embers fade;

  Vast shadows one by one pass by

  In silent daemon cavalcade.

  But still the magic volume holds

  The raptur’d eye in realms apart,

  And fulgent sorcery enfolds

  The willing mind and eager heart.

  The lonely room no more is there —

  For to the sight in pomp appear

  Temples and cities pois’d in air

  And blazing glories — sphere on sphere.

  Christmas

  The cottage hearth beams warm and bright,

  The candles gaily glow;

  The stars emit a kinder light

  Above the drifted snow.

  Down from the sky a magic steals

  To glad the passing year,

  And belfries sing with joyous peals,

  For Christmastide is here!

  Waste Paper

  A Poem of Profound Insignificance

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  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 moo
nshine 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

 

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