Vol. 5, No. 3 (March 1919), Pages 3-4
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
Written: 16th July 1919
First Published: National Enquirer,
Vol. 9, No. 11 (11th December 1919), Page 3
This poem is about the house at 135 Benefit Street in Providence that also inspired the short story “The Shunned 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
Written: October 1919
First Published: The Vagrant,
No. 10 (October 1919), Pages 6-7
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
Written: November 1919
First Published: The Tryout,
Vol. 5, No. 11 (November 1919), Pages 11-12
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’ primeva
l 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.
The Nightmare Lake
Written: December 1919
First Published: The Vagrant,
No. 12 (December 1919), Pages 13–14
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
Written: March 1920
First Published: The Silver Clarion,
Vol. 3, No. 12 (March 1920), Page 4
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.
The Cats
Written: 15th February 1925
First Published: A Winter Wish.
By H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by Tom Collins.
Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press, (1977), Pages 116-117
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
Written: December 1925
First Published: Weird Tales,
Vol. 8, No. 6 (December 1926), Page 846
Originally a christmas poem sent to Farnsworth Wright, who surprised Lovecraft by publishing it as “Yule Horror”.
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 aka “In a Suburb”
Written: March 1926
First Published: The National Amateur,
Vol. 48, No. 4 (March 1926), Page 33
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.
Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology Page 141
