Poetry by H. P. Lovecraft

Please enjoy this collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s most memorable verses. They have been carefully curated for your perusal—but beware their charms, lest you become irrevocably knotted in their slithering grasp.

To read a brief biography detailing Lovecraft’s life and legacy, please visit his prose page.

“Poemata Minora, Volume II” (1902)

Ode to Selene or Diana

Immortal Moon, in maiden splendour shine.
Dispense thy beams, divine Latona’s child.
Thy silver rays all grosser things define,
And hide harsh truth in sweet illusion mild.

In thy soft light, the city of unrest
That stands so squalid in thy brother’s glare
Throws off its habit, and in silence blest
Becomes a vision, sparkling bright and fair.

The modern world, with all it’s care & pain,
The smoky streets, the hideous clanging mills,
Face ’neath thy beams, Selene, and again
We dream like shepherds on Chaldæa’s hills.

Take heed, Diana, of my humble plea.
Convey me where my happiness may last.
Draw me against the tide of time’s rough sea
And let my sprirt rest amid the past.

To the Old Pagan Religion

Olympian gods! How can I let ye go
And pin my faith to this new Christian creed?
Can I resign the deities I know
For him who on a cross for man did bleed?

How in my weakness can my hopes depend
On one lone God, though mighty be his pow’r?
Why can Jove’s host no more assistance lend,
To soothe my pain, and cheer my troubled hour?

Are there no Dryads on these wooded mounts
O’er which I oft in desolation roam?
Are there no Naiads in these crystal founts?
Nor Nereids upon the Ocean foam?

Fast spreads the new; the older faith declines.
The name of Christ resounds upon the air.
But my wrack’d soul in solitude repines
And gives the Gods their last-receivèd pray’r.

On the Ruin of Rome

Low dost thou lie, O Rome, neath the foot of the Teuton
Slaves are thy men, and bent to the will of thy conqueror:
Wither hath gone, great city, the race that gave law to all nations,
Subdu’d the east and the west, and made them bow down to thy consuls.
Knew not defeat, but gave it to all who attack’d thee?

Dead! and replac’d by these wretches who cower in confusion
Dead! They who gave us this empire to guard and to live in
Rome, thou didst fall from thy pow’r with the proud race that made thee,
And we, base Italians, enjoy’d what we could not have builded.

To Pan

Seated in a woodland glen
By a shallow reedy stream
Once I fell a-musing, when
I was lull’d into a dream.

From the brook a shape arose
Half a man and half a goat.
Hoofs it had instead of toes
And a beard adorn’d its throat

On a set of rustic reeds
Sweetly play’d this hybrid man
Naught car’d I for earthly needs,
For I knew that this was Pan

Nymphs & Satyrs gather’d ’round
To enjoy the lively sound.

All to soon I woke in pain
And return’d to haunts of men.
But in rural vales I’d fain
Live and hear Pan’s pipes again.

On the Vanity of Human Ambition

Apollo, chasing Daphne, gain’d his prize
But lo! she turn’d to wood before his eyes.
More modern swains at golden prizes aim,
And ever strive some worldly thing to claim.
Yet ’tis the same as in Apollo’s case,
For, once attain’d, the purest gold seems base.
All that men seek ’s unworthy of the quest,
Yet seek they will, and never pause for rest.
True bliss, methinks, a man can only find
In virtuous life, & cultivated mind.

“On Receiving a Picture of Swans” (1915)

With pensive grace the melancholy Swan
Mourns o’er the tomb of luckless Phaëton;
On grassy banks the weeping poplars wave,
And guard with tender care the wat’ry grave.
Would that I might, should I too proudly claim
An Heav’nly parent, or a Godlike fame,
When flown too high, and dash’d to depths below,
Receive such tribute as a Cygnus’ woe!
The faithful bird, that dumbly floats along,
Sighs all the deeper for his want of song.

“Unda; or, The Bride of the Sea” (1915)

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 fever’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!

“The Poe-et’s Nightmare” (1916)

A Fable

Luxus tumultus semper causa est.

Lucullus Languish, student of the skies,
And connoisseur of rarebits and mince pies,
A bard by choice, a grocer’s clerk by trade,
(Grown pessimist thro’ honours long delay’d),
A secret yearning bore, that he might shine
In breathing numbers, and in song divine.
Each day his fountain pen was wont to drop
An ode or dirge or two about the shop,
Yet naught could strike the chord within his heart
That throbb’d for poesy, and cry’d for art.
Each eve he sought his bashful Muse to wake
With overdoses of ice-cream and cake;
But thou’ th’ ambitious youth a dreamer grew,
Th’ Aonian Nymph declin’d to come to view.
Sometimes at dusk he scour’d the heav’ns afar,
Searching for raptures in the evening star;
One night he strove to catch a tale untold
In crystal deeps—but only caught a cold.
So pin’d Lucullus with his lofty woe,
Till one drear day he bought a set of Poe:
Charm’d with the cheerful horrors there display’d,
He vow’d with gloom to woo the Heav’nly Maid.
Of Auber’s tarn and Yaanek’s slope he dreams,
And weaves an hundred Ravens in his schemes.
Not far from our young hero’s peaceful home
Lies the fair grove wherein he loves to roam.
Tho’ but a stunted copse in vacant lot,
He dubs it Tempe, and adores the spot;
When shallow puddles dot the wooded plain,
And brim o’er muddy banks with muddy rain,
He calls them limpid lakes or poison pools
(Depending on which bard his fancy rules).
’Tis here he comes with Heliconian fire
On Sundays when he smites the Attic lyre;
And here one afternoon he brought his gloom,
Resolv’d to chant a poet’s lay of doom.
Roget’s Thesaurus, and a book of rhymes,
Provide the rungs whereon his spirit climbs:
With this grave retinue he trod the grove
And pray’d the Fauns he might a Poe-et prove.
But sad to tell, ere Pegasus flew high,
The not unrelish’d supper hour drew nigh;
Our tuneful swain th’ imperious call attends,
And soon above the groaning table bends.
Tho’ it were too prosaic to relate
Th’ exact particulars of what he ate
(Such long-drawn lists the hasty reader skips,
Like Homer’s well-known catalogue of ships),
This much we swear: that as adjournment near’d,
A monstrous lot of cake had disappear’d!
Soon to his chamber the young bard repairs,
And courts soft Somnus with sweet Lydian airs;
Thro’ open casement scans the star-strown deep,
And ’neath Orion’s beams sinks off to sleep.
Now start from airy dell the elfin train
That dance each midnight o’er the sleeping plain,
To bless the just, or cast a warning spell
On those who dine not wisely, but too well.
First Deacon Smith they plague, whose nasal glow
Comes from what Holmes hath call’d “Elixir Pro”;
Group’d round the couch his visage they deride,
Whilst thro’ his dreams unnumber’d serpents glide.
Next troop the little folk into the room
Where snores our young Endymion, swath’d in gloom:
A smile lights up his boyish face, whilst he
Dreams of the moon—or what he ate at tea.
The chieftain elf th’ unconscious youth surveys,
And on his form a strange enchantment lays:
Those lips, that lately thrill’d with frosted cake,
Uneasy sounds in slumbrous fashion make;
At length their owner’s fancies they rehearse,
And lisp this awesome Poe-em in blank verse:

Aletheia Phrikodes
Omnia risus et omnia pulvis et omnia nihil.

Demoniac clouds, up-pil’d in chasmy reach
Of soundless heav’n, smother’d the brooding night;
Nor came the wonted whisp’rings of the swamp,
Nor voice of autumn wind along the moor,
Nor mutter’d noises of th’ insomnious grove
Whose black recesses never saw the sun.
Within that grove a hideous hollow lies,
Half bare of trees; a pool in centre lurks
That none dares sound; a tarn of murky face
(Tho’ naught can prove its hue, since light of day,
Affrighted, shuns the forest-shadow’d banks).
Hard by, a yawning hillside grotto breathes,
From deeps unvisited, a dull, dank air
That sears the leaves on certain stunted trees
Which stand about, clawing the spectral gloom
With evil boughs. To this accursed dell
Come woodland creatures, seldom to depart:
Once I behold, upon a crumbling stone
Set altar-like before the cave, a thing
I saw not clearly, yet from glimpsing, fled.
In this half-dusk I meditate alone
At many a weary noontide, when without
A world forgets me in its sun-blest mirth.
Here howl by night the werewolves, and the souls
Of those that knew me well in other days.
Yet on this night the grove spake not to me;
Nor spake the swamp, nor wind along the moor,
Nor moan’d the wind about the lonely eaves
Of the bleak, haunted pile wherein I lay.
I was afraid to sleep, or quench the spark
Of the low-burning taper by my couch.
I was afraid when thro’ the vaulted space
Of the old tow’r, the clock-ticks died away
Into a silence so profound and chill
That my teeth chatter’d—giving yet no sound.
Then flicker’d low the light, and all dissolv’d,
Leaving me floating in the hellish grasp
Of body’d blackness, from whose beating wings
Came ghoulish blasts of charnel-scented mist.
Things vague, unseen, unfashion’d, and unnam’d
Jostled each other in the seething void
That gap’d, chaotic, downward to a sea
Of speechless horror, foul with writhing thoughts.
All this I felt, and felt the mocking eyes
Of the curs’d universe upon my soul;
Yet naught I saw nor heard, till flash’d a beam
Of lurid lustre thro’ the rotting heav’ns,
Playing on scenes I labour’d not to see.
Methought the nameless tarn, alight at last,
Reflected shapes, and more reveal’d within
Those shocking depths than ne’er were seen before;
Methought from out the cave a demon train,
Grinning and smirking, reel’d in fiendish rout;
Bearing within their reeking paws a load
Of carrion viands for an impious feast.
Methought the stunted trees with hungry arms
Grop’d greedily for things I dare not name;
The while a stifling, wraith-like noisomeness
Fill’d all the dale, and spoke a larger life
Of uncorporeal hideousness awake
In the half-sentient wholeness of the spot.
Now glow’d the ground, and tarn, and cave, and trees,
And moving forms, and things not spoken of,
With such a phosphorescence as men glimpse
In the putrescent thickets of the swamp
Where logs decaying lie, and rankness reigns.
Methought a fire-mist drap’d with lucent fold
The well-remember’d features of the grove,
Whilst whirling ether bore in eddying streams
The hot, unfinish’d stuff of nascent worlds
Hither and thither thro’ infinities
Of light and darkness, strangely intermix’d;
Wherein all entity had consciousness,
Without th’ accustom’d outward shape of life.
Of these swift-circling currents was my soul,
Free from the flesh, a true constituent part;
Nor felt I less myself, for want of form.
Then clear’d the mist, and o’er a star-strown scene,
Divine and measureless, I gaz’d in awe.
Alone in space, I view’d a feeble fleck
Of silvern light, marking the narrow ken
Which mortals call the boundless universe.
On ev’ry side, each as a tiny star,
Shone more creations, vaster than our own,
And teeming with unnumber’d forms of life;
Tho’ we as life would recognise it not,
Being bound to earthy thoughts of human mould.
As on a moonless night the Milky Way
In solid sheen displays its countless orbs
To weak terrestrial eyes, each orb a sun;
So beam’d the prospect on my wond’ring soul:
A spangled curtain, rich with twinkling gems,
Yet each a mighty universe of suns.
But as I gaz’d, I sens’d a spirit voice
In speech didactic, tho’ no voice it was,
Save as it carried thought. It bade me mark
That all the universes in my view
Form’d but an atom in infinity;
Whose reaches pass the ether-laden realms
Of heat and light, extending to far fields
Where flourish worlds invisible and vague,
Fill’d with strange wisdom and uncanny life,
And yet beyond; to myriad spheres of light,
To spheres of darkness, to abysmal voids
That know the pulses of disorder’d force.
Big with these musings, I survey’d the surge
Of boundless being, yet I us’d not eyes,
For spirit leans not on the props of sense.
The docent presence swell’d my strength of soul;
All things I knew, but knew with mind alone.
Time’s endless vista spread before my thought
With its vast pageant of unceasing change
And sempiternal strife of force and will;
I saw the ages flow in stately stream
Past rise and fall of universe and life;
I saw the birth of suns and worlds, their death,
Their transmutation into limpid flame,
Their second birth and second death, their course
Perpetual thro’ the aeons’ termless flight,
Never the same, yet born again to serve
The varying purpose of omnipotence.
And whilst I watch’d, I knew each second’s space
Was greater than the lifetime of our world.
Then turn’d my musings to that speck of dust
Whereon my form corporeal took its rise;
That speck, born but a second, which must die
In one brief second more; that fragile earth;
That crude experiment; that cosmic sport
Which holds our proud, aspiring race of mites
And moral vermin; those presuming mites
Whom ignorance with empty pomp adorns,
And misinstructs in specious dignity;
Those mites who, reas’ning outward, vaunt themselves
As the chief work of Nature, and enjoy
In fatuous fancy the particular care
Of all her mystic, super-regnant pow’r.
And as I strove to vision the sad sphere
Which lurk’d, lost in ethereal vortices,
Methough my soul, tun’d to the infinite,
Refus’d to glimpse that poor atomic blight;
That misbegotten accident of space;
That globe of insignificance, whereon
(My guide celestial told me) dwells no part
Of empyrean virtue, but where breed
The coarse corruptions of divine disease;
The fest’ring ailments of infinity;
The morbid matter by itself call’d man:
Such matter (said my guide) as oft breaks forth
On broad Creation’s fabric, to annoy
For a brief instant, ere assuaging death
Heal up the malady its birth provok’d.
Sicken’d, I turn’d my heavy thoughts away.
Then spake th’ ethereal guide with mocking mien,
Upbraiding me for searching after Truth;
Visiting on my mind the searing scorn
Of mind superior; laughing at the woe
Which rent the vital essence of my soul.
Methought he brought remembrance of the time
When from my fellows to the grove I stray’d,
In solitude and dusk to meditate
On things forbidden, and to pierce the veil
Of seeming good and seeming beauteousness
That covers o’er the tragedy of Truth,
Helping mankind forget his sorry lot,
And raising Hope where Truth would crush it down.
He spake, and as he ceas’d, methought the flames
Of fuming Heav’n resolv’d in torments dire;
Whirling in maelstroms of rebellious might,
Yet ever bound by laws I fathom’d not.
Cycles and epicycles, of such girth
That each a cosmos seem’d, dazzled my gaze
Till all a wild phantasmal glow became.
Now burst athwart the fulgent formlessness
A rift of purer sheen, a sight supernal,
Broader that all the void conceiv’d by man,
Yet narrow here. A glimpse of heav’ns beyond;
Of weird creations so remote and great
That ev’n my guide assum’d a tone of awe.
Borne on the wings of stark immensity,
A touch of rhythm celestial reach’d my soul;
Thrilling me more with horror than with joy.
Again the spirit mock’d my human pangs,
And deep revil’d me for presumptuous thoughts:
Yet changing now his mien, he bade me scan
The wid’ning rift that clave the walls of space;
He bade me search it for the ultimate;
He bade me find the Truth I sought so long;
He bade me brave th’ unutterable Thing,
The final Truth of moving entity.
All this he bade and offer’d—but my soul,
Clinging to life, fled without aim or knowledge,
Shrieking in silence thro’ the gibbering deeps.

Thus shriek’d the young Lucullus, as he fled
Thro’ gibbering deeps—and tumbled out of bed;
Within the room the morning sunshine gleams,
Whilst the poor youth recalls his troubled dreams.
He feels his aching limbs, whose woeful pain
Informs his soul his body lives again,
And thanks his stars—or cosmoses—or such
That he survives the noxious nightmare’s clutch.
Thrill’d with the music of th’ eternal spheres
(Or is it the alarm-clock that he hears?),
He vows to all the Pantheon, high and low,
No more to feed on cake, or pie, or Poe.
And now his gloomy spirits seem to rise,
As he the world beholds with clearer eyes;
The cup he thought too full of dregs to quaff
Affords him wine enough to raise a laugh.
(All this is metaphor—you must not think
Our late Endymion prone to stronger drink!)
With brighter visage and with lighter heart,
He turns his fancies to the grocer’s mart;
And strange to say, at last he seems to find
His daily duties worthy of his mind.
Since Truth prov’d such a high and dang’rous goal,
Our bard seeks one less trying to his soul;
With deep-drawn breath he flouts his dreary woes,
And a good clerk from a bad poet grows!
Now close attend my lay, ye scribbling crew
That bay the moon in numbers strange and new;
That madly for the spark celestial bawl
In metres short or long, or none at all:
Curb your rash force, in numbers or at tea,
Nor overzealous for high fancies be;
Reflect, ere ye the draught Pierian take,
What worthy clerks or plumbers ye might make;
Wax not too frenzied in the leaping line
That neither sense nor measure can confine,
Lest ye, like young Lucullus Launguish, groan
Beneath Poe-etic nightmares of your own!

“Fact and Fancy” (1917)

How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet’s mood!
Young Zeno, practic’d in the Stoic’s art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th’ effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an ic’d review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The graceful legends of the story’d past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th’ embellish’d page,
And scolds the comforts of a dreary age:
Would’st strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds Sylphs and Dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze;
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning’s woes,
Th’ ethereal life of body’d Nature knows:
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlit dreams!

“A Garden” (1917)

There’s an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,
Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;
Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,
And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday.
There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there’s moss about the pool,
And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool:
In the silent sunken pathways springs an herbage sparse and spare,
Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air.
There is not a living creature in the lonely space around,
And the hedge-encompass’d quiet never echoes to a sound.
As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find
When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;
I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more,
As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before.
Then a sadness settles o’er me, and a tremor seems to start:
For I know the flow’rs are shrivell’d hopes—the garden is my heart!

“The Peace Advocate” (1917)

(Supposed to be a “pome,” but cast strictly in modern metre.)

The vicar sat in the firelight’s glow,
A volume in his hand;
And a tear he shed for the widespread woe,
And the anguish brought by the vicious foe
That overran the land.

But ne’er a hand for his King rais’d he,
For he was a man of peace;
And he car’d not a whit for the victory
That must come to preserve his nation free,
And the world from fear release.

His son had buckled on his sword,
The first at the front was he;
But the vicar his valiant child ignor’d,
And his noble deeds in the field deplor’d,
For he knew not bravery.

On his flock he strove to fix his will,
And lead them to scorn the fray.
He told them that conquest brings but ill;
That meek submission would serve them still
To keep the foe away.

In vain did he hear the bugle’s sound
That strove to avert the fall.
The land, quoth he, is all men’s ground,
What matter if friend or foe be found
As master of us all?

One day from the village green hard by
The vicar heard a roar
Of cannon that rivall’d the anguish’d cry
Of the hundreds that liv’d, but wish’d to die
As the enemy rode them o’er.

Now he sees his own cathedral shake
At the foeman’s wanton aim.
The ancient tow’rs with the bullets quake;
The steeples fall, the foundations break,
And the whole is lost in flame.

Up the vicarage lane file the cavalcade,
And the vicar, and daughter, and wife
Scream out in vain for the needed aid
That only a regiment might have made
Ere they lose what is more than life.

Then quick to his brain came manhood’s thought,
As he saw his erring course;
And the vicar his dusty rifle brought
That the foe might at least by one be fought,
And force repaid with force.

One shot—the enemy’s blasting fire
A breach in the wall cuts thro’,
But the vicar replies with his waken’d ire;
Fells one arm’d brute for each fallen spire,
And in blood is born anew.

Two shots—the wife and daughter sink,
Each with a mortal wound;
And the vicar, too madden’d by far to think,
Rushes boldly on to death’s vague brink,
With the manhood he has found.

Three shots—but shots of another kind
The smoky regions rend;
And upon the foeman with rage gone blind,
Like a ceaseless, resistless, avenging wind,
The rescuing troops descend.

The smoke-pall clears, and the vicar’s son
His father’s life has sav’d;
And the vicar looks o’er the ruin done,
Ere the vict’ry by his child was won,
His face with care engrav’d.

The vicar sat in the firelight’s glow,
The volume in his hand,
That brought to his hearth the bitter woe
Which only a husband and father can know,
And truly understand.

With a chasten’d mien he flung the book
To the leaping flames before;
And a breath of sad relief he took
As the pages blacken’d beneath his look—
The fool of Peace no more!

Epilogue

The rev’rend parson, wak’d to man’s estate,
Laments his wife’s and daughter’s common fate.
His martial son in warm embrace enfolds,
And clings the tighter to the child he holds.
His peaceful notions, banish’d in an hour,
Will nevermore his wit or sense devour;
But steep’d in truth, ’tis now his nobler plan
To cure, yet recognise, the faults of man.

“Nemesis” (1917)

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.

I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

I have peer’d from the casement in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof’d village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

“Astrophobos” (1917)

In the midnight heavens burning
Thro’ ethereal deeps afar,
Once I watch’d with restless yearning
An alluring, aureate star;
Ev’ry eye aloft returning,
Gleaming nigh the Arctic car.

Mystic waves of beauty blended
With the gorgeous golden rays;
Phantasies of bliss descended
In a myrrh’d Elysian haze;
And in lyre-born chords extended
Harmonies of Lydian lays.

There (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,
Where the free and blessed dwell,
And each moment bears a treasure
Freighted with a lotus-spell,
And there floats a liquid measure
From the lute of Israfel.

There (I told myself) were shining
Worlds of happiness unknown,
Peace and Innocence entwining
By the Crowned Virtue’s throne;
Men of light, their thoughts refining
Purer, fairer, than our own.

Thus I mus’d, when o’er the vision
Crept a red delirious change;
Hope dissolving to derision,
Beauty to distortion strange;
Hymnic chords in weird collision,
Spectral sights in endless range.

Crimson burn’d the star of sadness
As behind the beams I peer’d;
All was woe that seem’d but gladness
Ere my gaze with truth was sear’d;
Cacodaemons, mir’d with madness,
Thro’ the fever’d flick’ring leer’d.

Now I know the fiendish fable
That the golden glitter bore;
Now I shun the spangled sable
That I watch’d and lov’d before;
But the horror, set and stable,
Haunts my soul for evermore.

“Laeta; a Lament” (1917)

Respectfully Dedicated to Rheinhart Kleiner, Esq.
With Compliments of the Author

How sad droop the willows by Zulal’s fair side,
Where so lately I stray’d with my raven-hair’d bride:
Ev’ry light-floating lily, each flow’r on the shore,
Folds in sorrow since Laeta can see them no more!

Oh, blest were the days when in childhood and hope
With my Laeta I rov’d o’er the blossom-clad slope,
Plucking white meadow-daisies and ferns by the stream,
As we laugh’d at the ripples that twinkle and gleam.

Not a bloom deck’d the mead that could rival in grace
The dear innocent charms of my Laeta’s fair face;
Not a thrush thrill’d the grove with a carol so choice
As the silvery strains of my Laeta’s sweet voice.

The shy Nymphs of the woodland, the fount and the plain,
Strove to equal her beauty, but strove all in vain;
Yet no envy they bore her, while fruitless they strove,
For so pure was my Laeta, they could only love!

When the warm breath of Auster play’d soft o’er the flow’rs,
And young Zephyrus rustled the gay scented bow’rs,
Ev’ry breeze seem’d to pause as it drew near the fair,
Too much aw’d at her sweetness to tumble her hair.

How fond were our dreams on the day when we stood
In the ivy-grown temple beside the dark wood;
When our pledges we seal’d at the sanctify’d shrine,
And I knew that my Laeta forever was mine!

How blissful our thoughts when the wild autumn came,
And the forests with scarlet and gold were aflame;
Yet how heavy my heart when I first felt the fear
That my starry-eyed Laeta would fade with the year!

The pastures were sere and the heavens were grey
When I laid my lov’d Laeta forever away,
And the river god pity’d, as weeping I pac’d
Mingling hot bitter tears with his cold frozen waste.

Now the flow’rs have return’d, but they bloom not so sweet
As in days when they blossom’d round Laeta’s dear feet;
And the willows complain to the answering hill,
And the thrushes that once were so happy are still.

The green meadows and groves in their loneliness pine,
Whilst the Dryads no more in their madrigals join,
The breeze once so joyous now murmurs and sighs,
And blows soft o’er the spot where my lov’d Laeta lies.

So pensive I roam o’er the desolate lawn
Where we wander’d and lov’d in the days that are gone,
And I yearn for the autumn, when Zulal’s blue tide
Shall sing low by my grave at the lov’d Laeta’s side.

“Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme” (1918)

I am He who howls in the night;
I am He who moans in the snow;
I am He who hath never seen light;
I am He who mounts from below.

My car is the car of Death;
My wings are the wings of dread;
My breath is the north wind’s breath;
My prey are the cold and the dead.

In old Auvergne, when schools were poor and few,
And peasants fancy’d what they scarcely knew,
When lords and gentry shunn’d their Monarch’s throne
For solitary castles of their own,
There dwelt a man of rank, whose fortress stood
In the hush’d twilight of a hoary wood.
De Blois his name; his lineage high and vast,
A proud memorial of an honour’d past;
But curious swains would whisper now and then
That Sieur De Blois was not as other men.
In person dark and lean, with glossy hair,
And gleaming teeth that he would often bare,
With piercing eye, and stealthy roving glance,
And tongue that clipt the soft, sweet speech of France;
The Sieur was little lov’d and seldom seen,
So close he kept within his own demesne.
The castle servants, few, discreet, and old,
Full many a tale of strangeness might have told;
But bow’d with years, they rarely left the door
Wherein their sires and grandsires serv’d before.
Thus gossip rose, as gossip rises best,
When mystery imparts a keener zest;
Seclusion oft the poison tongue attracts,
And scandal prospers on a dearth of facts.
’Twas said, the Sieur had more than once been spy’d
Alone at midnight by the river’s side,
With aspect so uncouth, and gaze so strange,
That rustics cross’d themselves to see the change;
Yet none, when press’d, could clearly say or know
Just what it was, or why they trembled so.
De Blois, as rumour whisper’d, fear’d to pray,
Nor us’d his chapel on the Sabbath day;
Howe’er this may have been, ’twas known at least
His household had no chaplain, monk, or priest.
But if the Master liv’d in dubious fame,
Twice fear’d and hated was his noble Dame;
As dark as he, in features wild and proud,
And with a weird supernal grace endow’d,
The haughty mistress scorn’d the rural train
Who sought to learn her source, but sought in vain.
Old women call’d her eyes too bright by half,
And nervous children shiver’d at her laugh;
Richard, the dwarf (whose word had little weight),
Vow’d she was like a serpent in her gait,
Whilst ancient Pierre (the aged often err)
Laid all her husband’s mystery to her.
Still more absurd were those odd mutter’d things
That calumny to curious list’ners brings;
Those subtle slanders, told with downcast face,
And muffled voice—those tales no man may trace;
Tales that the faith of old wives can command,
Tho’ always heard at sixth or seventh hand.
Thus village legend darkly would imply
That Dame De Blois possess’d an evil eye;
Or going further, furtively suggest
A lurking spark of sorcery in her breast;
Old Mère Allard (herself half witch) once said
The lady’s glance work’d strangely on the dead.
So liv’d the pair, like many another two
That shun the crowd, and shrink from public view.
They scorn’d the doubts by ev’ry peasant shewn,
And ask’d but one thing—to be let alone!

’Twas Candlemas, the dreariest time of year,
With fall long gone, and spring too far to cheer,
When little Jean, the bailiff’s son and heir,
Fell sick and threw the doctors in despair.
A child so stout and strong that few would think
An hour might carry him to death’s dark brink,
Yet pale he lay, tho’ hidden was the cause,
And Galens search’d in vain thro’ Nature’s laws.
But stricken sadness could not quite suppress
The roving thought, or wrinkled grandam’s guess:
Tho’ spoke by stealth, ’twas known to half a score
That Dame De Blois rode by the day before;
She had (they said) with glances weird and wild
Paus’d by the gate to view the prattling child,
Nor did they like the smile which seem’d to trace
New lines of evil on her proud, dark face.
These things they whisper’d, when the mother’s cry
Told of the end—the gentle soul gone by;
In genuine grief the kindly watcher wept,
Whilst the lov’d babe with saints and angels slept.
The village priest his simple rites went thro’,
And good Michel nail’d up the box of yew;
Around the corpse the holy candles burn’d,
The mourners sighed, the parents dumbly yearn’d.
Then one by one each sought his humble bed,
And left the lonely mother with her dead.
Late in the night it was, when o’er the vale
The storm-king swept with pandemoniac gale;
Deep pil’d the cruel snow, yet strange to tell,
The lightning sputter’d while the white flakes fell;
A hideous presence seem’d abroad to steal,
And terror sounded in the thunder’s peal.
Within the house of grief the tapers glow’d
Whilst the poor mother bow’d beneath her load;
Her salty eyes too tired now to weep,
Too pain’d to see, too sad to close in sleep.
The clock struck three, above the tempest heard,
When something near the lifeless infant stirr’d;
Some slipp’ry thing, that flopp’d in awkward way,
And climb’d the table where the coffin lay;
With scaly convolutions strove to find
The cold, still clay that death had left behind.
The nodding mother hears—starts broad awake—
Empower’d to reason, yet too stunn’d to shake;
The pois’nous thing she sees, and nimbly foils
The ghoulish purpose of the quiv’ring coils:
With ready axe the serpent’s head she cleaves,
And thrills with savage triumph whilst she grieves.
The injur’d reptile hissing glides from sight,
And hides its cloven carcass in the night.

The weeks slipp’d by, and gossip’s tongue began
To call the Sieur De Blois an alter’d man;
With curious mien he oft would pace along
The village street, and eye the gaping throng.
Yet whilst he shew’d himself as ne’er before,
His wild-eyed lady was observ’d no more.
In course of time, ’twas scarce thought odd or ill
That he his ears with village lore should fill;
Nor was the town with special rumour rife
When he sought out the bailiff and his wife:
Their tale of sorrow, with its ghastly end,
Was told, indeed, by ev’ry wond’ring friend.
The Sieur heard all, and low’ring rode away,
Nor was he seen again for many a day.

When vernal sunshine shed its cheering glow,
And genial zephyrs blew away the snow,
To frighten’d swains a horror was reveal’d
In the damp herbage of a melting field.
There (half preserv’d by winter’s frigid bed)
Lay the dark Dame De Blois, untimely dead;
By some assassin’s stroke most foully slain,
Her shapely brow and temples cleft in twain.
Reluctant hands the dismal burden bore
To the stone arches of the husband’s door,
Where silent serfs the ghastly thing receiv’d,
Trembling with fright, but less amaz’d than griev’d;
The Sieur his dame beheld with blazing eyes,
And shook with anger, more than with surprise.
(At least ’tis thus the stupid peasants told
Their wide-mouth’d wives when they the tale unroll’d.)
The village wonder’d why De Blois had kept
His spouse’s loss unmention’d and unwept,
Nor were there lacking sland’rous tongues to claim
That the dark master was himself to blame.
But village talk could scarcely hope to solve
A crime so deep, and thus the months revolve:
The rural train repeat the gruesome tale,
And gape and marvel more than they bewail.

Swift flew the sun, and winter once again
With icy talons gripp’d the frigid plain.
December brought its store of Christmas cheer,
And grateful peasants hail’d the op’ning year;
But by the hearth as Candlemas drew nigh,
The whisp’ring ancients spoke of things gone by.
Few had forgot the dark demoniac lore
Of things that came the Candlemas before,
And many a crone intently eyed the house
Where dwelt the sadden’d bailiff and his spouse.
At last the day arriv’d, the sky o’erspread
With dark’ning messengers and clouds of lead;
Each neighb’ring grove Aeolian warnings sigh’d,
And thick’ning terrors broadcast seem’d to bide.
The good folk, tho’ they knew not why, would run
Swift past the bailiff’s door, the scene to shun;
Within the house the grieving couple wept,
And mourn’d the child who now forever slept.
On rush’d the dusk in doubly hideous form,
Borne on the pinions of the gath’ring storm;
Unusual murmurs fill’d the rainless wind,
The rising river lash’d the troubled shore;
Black thro’ the night the awful storm-god prowl’d,
And froze the list’ners’ life-blood as he howl’d;
Gigantic trees like supple rushes sway’d,
Whilst for his home the trembling cotter pray’d.
Now falls a sudden lull amidst the gale;
With less’ning force the circling currents wail;
Far down the stream that laves the neighb’ring mead
Burst a new ululation, wildly key’d;
The peasant train a frantic mien assume,
And huddle closer in the spectral gloom:
To each strain’d ear the truth too well is known,
For that dread sound can come from wolves alone!
The rustics close attend, when ere they think,
A lupine army swarms the river’s brink;
From out the waters leap a howling train
That rend the air, and scatter o’er the plain:
With flaming orbs the frothing creatures fly,
And chant with hellish voice their hungry cry.
First of the pack a mighty monster leaps
With fearless tread, and martial order keeps;
Th’ attendant wolves his yelping tones obey,
And form in columns for the coming fray:
No frighten’d swain they harm, but silent bound
With a fix’d purpose o’er the frozen ground.
Straight course the monsters thro’ the village street,
Unholy vigour in their flying feet;
Thro’ half-shut blinds the shelter’d peasants peer,
And wax in wonder as they lose in fear.
Th’ excited pack at last their goal perceive,
And the vex’d air with deaf’ning clamour cleave;
The churls, astonish’d, watch th’ unnatural herd
Flock round a cottage at the leader’s word:
Quick spreads the fearsome fact, by rumour blown,
That the doom’d cottage is the bailiff’s own!
Round and around the howling daemons glide,
Whilst the fierce leader scales the vine-clad side;
The frantic wind its horrid wail renews,
And mutters madly thro’ the lifeless yews.
In the frail house the bailiff calmly waits
The rav’ning horde, and trusts th’ impartial Fates,
But the wan wife revives with curious mien
Another monster and an older scene;
Amidst th’ increasing wind that rocks the walls,
The dame to him the serpent’s deed recalls:
Then as a nameless thought fills both their minds,
The bare-fang’d leader crashes thro’ the blinds.
Across the room, with murd’rous fury rife,
Leaps the mad wolf, and seizes on the wife;
With strange intent he drags his shrieking prey
Close to the spot where once the coffin lay.
Wilder and wilder roars the mounting gale
That sweeps the hills and hurtles thro’ the vale;
The ill-made cottage shakes, the pack without
Dance with new fury in demoniac rout.
Quick as his thought, the valiant bailiff stands
Above the wolf, a weapon in his hands;
The ready axe that serv’d a year before,
Now serves as well to slay one monster more.
The creature drops inert, with shatter’d head,
Full on the floor, and silent as the dead;
The rescu’d wife recalls the dire alarms,
And faints from terror in her husband’s arms.
But as he holds her, all the cottage quakes,
And with full force the titan tempest breaks:
Down crash the walls, and o’er their shrinking forms
Burst the mad revels of the storm of storms.
Th’ encircling wolves advance with ghastly pace,
Hunger and murder in each gleaming face,
But as they close, from out the hideous night
Flashes a bolt of unexpected light:
The vivid scene to ev’ry eye appears,
And peasants shiver with returning fears.
Above the wreck the scatheless chimney stays,
Its outline glimm’ring in the fitful rays,
Whilst o’er the hearth still hangs the household shrine,
The Saviour’s image and the Cross divine!
Round the blest spot a lambent radiance glows,
And shields the cotters from their stealthy foes:
Each monstrous creature marks the wondrous glare,
Drops, fades, and vanishes in empty air!
The village train with startled eyes adore,
And count their beads in rev’rence o’er and o’er.
Now fades the light, and dies the raging blast,
The hour of dread and reign of horror past.
Pallid and bruis’d, from out his toppled walls
The panting bailiff with his good wife crawls:
Kind hands attend them, whilst o’er all the town
A strange sweet peace of spirit settles down.
Wonder and fear are still’d in soothing sleep,
As thro’ the breaking clouds the moon rays peep.

Here paus’d the prattling grandam in her speech,
Confus’d with age, the tale half out of reach;
The list’ning guest, impatient for a clue,
Fears ’tis not one tale, but a blend of two;
He fain would know how far’d the widow’d lord
Whose eerie ways th’ initial theme afford,
And marvels that the crone so quick should slight
His fate, to babble of the wolf-wrack’d night.
The old wife, press’d, for greater clearness strives,
Nods wisely, and her scatter’d wits revives;
Yet strangely lingers on her latter tale
Of wolf and bailiff, miracle and gale.
When (quoth the crone) the dawn’s bright radiance bath’d
Th’ eventful scene, so late in terror swath’d,
The chatt’ring churls that sought the ruin’d cot
Found a new marvel in the gruesome spot.
From fallen walls a trail of gory red,
As of the stricken wolf, erratic led;
O’er road and mead the new-dript crimson wound,
Till lost amidst the neighb’ring swampy ground:
With wonder unappeas’d the peasants burn’d,
For what the quicksand takes is ne’er return’d.

Once more the grandam, with a knowing eye,
Stops in her tale, to watch a hawk soar by;
The weary list’ner, baffled, seeks anew
For some plain statement, or enlight’ning clue.
Th’ indulgent crone attends the puzzled plea,
Yet strangely mutters o’er the mystery.
The Sieur? Ah, yes—that morning all in vain
His shaking servants scour’d the frozen plain;
No man had seen him since he rode away
In silence on the dark preceding day.
His horse, wild-eyed with some unusual fright,
Came wand’ring from the river-bank that night.
His hunting-hound, that mourn’d with piteous woe,
Howl’d by the quicksand swamp, his grief to shew.
The village folk thought much, but utter’d less;
The servants’ search wore out in emptiness:
For Sieur De Blois (the old wife’s tale is o’er)
Was lost to mortal sight for evermore.

“Despair” (1919)

O’er the midnight moorlands crying,
Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,
In the night-wind madly flying,
Hellish forms with streaming hair;
In the barren branches creaking,
By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,
Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;
Damn’d daemons of despair.

Once, I think I half remember,
Ere the grey skies of November
Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,
Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;
Skies that now are dark were beaming,
Gold and azure, splendid seeming
Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—
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” (1919)

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” (1919)

’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” (1919)

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.

“The Nightmare Lake” (1919)

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!

“Providence” (1924)

Where bay and river tranquil blend,
And leafy hillsides rise,
The spires of Providence ascend
Against the ancient skies.

Here centuried domes of shining gold
Salute the morning’s glare,
While slanting gables, odd and old,
Are scatter’d here and there.

And in the narrow winding ways
That climb o’er slope and crest,
The magic of forgotten days
May still be found to rest.

A fanlight’s gleam, a knocker’s blow,
A glimpse of Georgian brick—
The sights and sounds of long ago
Where fancies cluster thick.

A flight of steps with iron rail,
A belfry looming tall,
A slender steeple, carv’d and pale,
A moss-grown garden wall.

A hidden churchyard’s crumbling proofs
Of man’s mortality,
A rotting wharf where gambrel roofs
Keep watch above the sea.

Square and parade, whose walls have tower’d
Full fifteen decades long
By cobbled ways ’mid trees embower’d,
And slighted by the throng.

Stone bridges spanning languid streams,
Houses perch’d on the hill,
And courts where mysteries and dreams
The brooding spirit fill.

Steep alley steps by vines conceal’d,
Where small-pan’d windows glow
At twilight on a bit of field
That chance has left below.

My Providence! What airy hosts
Turn still thy gilded vanes;
What winds of elf that with grey ghosts
People thine ancient lanes!

The chimes of evening as of old
Above thy valleys sound,
While thy stern fathers ’neath the mould
Make blest thy sacred ground.

Thou dream’st beside the waters there,
Unchang’d by cruel years;
A spirit from an age more fair
That shines behind our tears.

Thy twinkling lights each night I see,
Tho’ time and space divide;
For thou art of the soul of me,
And always at my side!

“The Cats” (1925)

Babels of blocks to the high heavens tow’ring,
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flow’ring,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.

Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
Cobwebs of cable by nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
Streams of live foetor, that rots in the sun.

Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
Shrieking and ringing and scrambling insane,
Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.

Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal,
Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
Yelling the burden of Pluto’s red rune.

Tall tow’rs and pyramids ivy’d and crumbling,
Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber’d streets;
Bleak broken bridges o’er rivers whose rumbling
Joins with no voice as the thick tide retreats.

Belfries that blackly against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac’d,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the waste!

“Festival” (1925)

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o’er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallow’d and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun’s turning flight,
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of earth’s kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwin’d
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow’rs are the pow’rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

And mayst thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

“Hallowe’en in a Suburb” (1926)

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.

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” (1929)

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” (1929)

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” (1929)

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” (1929)

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 meant 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!

“In a Sequester’d Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walk’d” (1936)

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arch’d high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a spectre glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, tho’ his song
Peals down thro’ time with a mysterious spell:
Only the few who sorcery’s secret know
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.

“Life’s Mystery” (date unknown)

Life! Ah, Life!
What may this fluorescent pageant mean?
Who can the evanescent object glean?
He that is dead is the key of Life—
Gone is the symbol, deep is the grave!

Man is a breath, and Life is the fire;
Birth is death, and silence the choir.
Wrest from the aeons the heart of gold!
Tear from the fabric the threads that are old!
Life! Ah, Life!

– L. Phillips Howard

The Raven Post