Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology

by H. P. Lovecraft

  VI. The Lamp

  We found the lamp inside those hollow cliffs

  Whose chiseled sign no priest in Thebes could read,

  And from whose caverns frightened hieroglyphs

  Warned every creature of earth’s breed.

  No more was there—just that one brazen bowl

  With traces of a curious oil within;

  Fretted with some obscurely patterned scroll,

  And symbols hinting vaguely of strange sin.

  Little the fears of forty centuries meant

  To us as we bore off our slender spoil,

  And when we scanned it in our darkened tent

  We struck a match to test the ancient oil.

  It blazed—great God!… But the vast shapes we saw

  In that mad flash have seared our lives with awe.

  VII. Zaman’s Hill

  The great hill hung close over the old town,

  A precipice against the main street’s end;

  Green, tall, and wooded, looking darkly down

  Upon the steeple at the highway bend.

  Two hundred years the whispers had been heard

  About what happened on the man-shunned slope—

  Tales of an oddly mangled deer or bird,

  Or of lost boys whose kin had ceased to hope.

  One day the mail-man found no village there,

  Nor were its folk or houses seen again;

  People came out from Aylesbury to stare—

  Yet they all told the mail-man it was plain

  That he was mad for saying he had spied

  The great hill’s gluttonous eyes, and jaws stretched wide.

  VIII. The Port

  Ten miles from Arkham I had struck the trail

  That rides the cliff-edge over Boynton Beach,

  And hoped that just at sunset I could reach

  The crest that looks on Innsmouth in the vale.

  Far out at sea was a retreating sail,

  White as hard years of ancient winds could bleach,

  But evil with some portent beyond speech,

  So that I did not wave my hand or hail.

  Sails out of lnnsmouth! echoing old renown

  Of long-dead times. But now a too-swift night

  Is closing in, and I have reached the height

  Whence I so often scan the distant town.

  The spires and roofs are there—but look! The gloom

  Sinks on dark lanes, as lightless as the tomb!

  IX. The Courtyard

  It was the city I had known before;

  The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngs

  Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs

  In crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.

  The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at me

  From where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,

  As edging through the filth I passed the gate

  To the black courtyard where the man would be.

  The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed

  That ever I had come to such a den,

  When suddenly a score of windows burst

  Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:

  Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead—

  And not a corpse had either hands or head!

  X. The Pigeon-Flyers

  They took me slumming, where gaunt walls of brick

  Bulge outward with a viscous stored-up evil,

  And twisted faces, thronging foul and thick,

  Wink messages to alien god and devil.

  A million fires were blazing in the streets,

  And from flat roofs a furtive few would fly

  Bedraggled birds into the yawning sky

  While hidden drums droned on with measured beats.

  I knew those fires were brewing monstrous things,

  And that those birds of space had been Outside—

  I guessed to what dark planet’s crypts they plied,

  And what they brought from Thog beneath their wings.

  The others laughed—till struck too mute to speak

  By what they glimpsed in one bird’s evil beak.

  XI. The Well

  Farmer Seth Atwood was past eighty when

  He tried to sink that deep well by his door,

  With only Eb to help him bore and bore.

  We laughed, and hoped he’d soon be sane again.

  And yet, instead, young Eb went crazy, too,

  So that they shipped him to the county farm.

  Seth bricked the well-mouth up as tight as glue—

  Then hacked an artery in his gnarled left arm.

  After the funeral we felt bound to get

  Out to that well and rip the bricks away,

  But all we saw were iron hand-holds set

  Down a black hole deeper than we could say.

  And yet we put the bricks back—for we found

  The hole too deep for any line to sound.

  XII. The Howler

  They told me not to take the Briggs’ Hill path

  That used to be the highroad through to Zoar,

  For Goody Watkins, hanged in seventeen-four,

  Had left a certain monstrous aftermath.

  Yet when I disobeyed, and had in view

  The vine-hung cottage by the great rock slope,

  I could not think of elms or hempen rope,

  But wondered why the house still seemed so new.

  Stopping a while to watch the fading day,

  I heard faint howls, as from a room upstairs,

  When through the ivied panes one sunset ray

  Struck in, and caught the howler unawares.

  I glimpsed—and ran in frenzy from the place,

  And from a four-pawed thing with human face.

  XIII. Hesperia

  The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires

  And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,

  Opens great gates to some forgotten year

  Of elder splendours and divine desires.

  Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,

  Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;

  A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear

  Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.

  It is the land where beauty’s meaning flowers;

  Where every unplaced memory has a source;

  Where the great river Time begins its course

  Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.

  Dreams bring us close—but ancient lore repeats

  That human tread has never soiled these streets.

  XIV. Star-Winds

  It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,

  Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours

  Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,

  But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.

  The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,

  And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,

  Heeding geometries of outer space,

  While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

  This is the hour when moonstruck poets know

  What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents

  And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,

  Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.

  Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,

  A dozen more of ours they sweep away!

  XV. Antarktos

  Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly

  Of the black cone amid the polar waste;

  Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,

  By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.

  Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,

  And only pale auroras and faint suns

  Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources

  Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

  If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder

 
What tricky mound of Nature’s build they spied;

  But the bird told of vaster parts, that under

  The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.

  God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew

  Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!

  XVI. The Window

  The house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,

  Of which no one could ever half keep track,

  And in a small room somewhat near the back

  Was an odd window sealed with ancient stone.

  There, in a dream-plagued childhood, quite alone

  I used to go, where night reigned vague and black;

  Parting the cobwebs with a curious lack

  Of fear, and with a wonder each time grown.

  One later day I brought the masons there

  To find what view my dim forbears had shunned,

  But as they pierced the stone, a rush of air

  Burst from the alien voids that yawned beyond.

  They fled—but I peered through and found unrolled

  All the wild worlds of which my dreams had told.

  XVII. A Memory

  There were great steppes, and rocky table-lands

  Stretching half-limitless in starlit night,

  With alien campfires shedding feeble light

  On beasts with tinkling bells, in shaggy bands.

  Far to the south the plain sloped low and wide

  To a dark zigzag line of wall that lay

  Like a huge python of some primal day

  Which endless time had chilled and petrified.

  I shivered oddly in the cold, thin air,

  And wondered where I was and how I came,

  When a cloaked form against a campfire’s glare

  Rose and approached, and called me by my name.

  Staring at that dead face beneath the hood,

  I ceased to hope—because I understood.

  XVIII. The Gardens of Yin

  Beyond that wall, whose ancient masonry

  Reached almost to the sky in moss-thick towers,

  There would be terraced gardens, rich with flowers,

  And flutter of bird and butterfly and bee.

  There would be walks, and bridges arching over

  Warm lotos-pools reflecting temple eaves,

  And cherry-trees with delicate boughs and leaves

  Against a pink sky where the herons hover.

  All would be there, for had not old dreams flung

  Open the gate to that stone-lanterned maze

  Where drowsy streams spin out their winding ways,

  Trailed by green vines from bending branches hung?

  I hurried—but when the wall rose, grim and great,

  I found there was no longer any gate.

  XIX. The Bells

  Year after year I heard that faint, far ringing

  Of deep-toned bells on the black midnight wind;

  Peals from no steeple I could ever find,

  But strange, as if across some great void winging.

  I searched my dreams and memories for a clue,

  And thought of all the chimes my visions carried;

  Of quiet Innsmouth, where the white gulls tarried

  Around an ancient spire that once I knew.

  Always perplexed I heard those far notes falling,

  Till one March night the bleak rain splashing cold

  Beckoned me back through gateways of recalling

  To elder towers where the mad clappers tolled.

  They tolled—but from the sunless tides that pour

  Through sunken valleys on the sea’s dead floor.

  XX. Night-Gaunts

  Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,

  But every night I see the rubbery things,

  Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings,

  And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.

  They come in legions on the north wind’s swell,

  With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,

  Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings

  To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.

  Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,

  Heedless of all the cries I try to make,

  And down the nether pits to that foul lake

  Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.

  But oh! If only they would make some sound,

  Or wear a face where faces should be found!

  XXI. Nyarlathotep

  And at the last from inner Egypt came

  The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;

  Silent and lean and cryptically proud,

  And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.

  Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,

  But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;

  While through the nations spread the awestruck word

  That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.

  Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;

  Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;

  The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled

  Down on the quaking citadels of man.

  Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,

  The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.

  XXII. Azathoth

  Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,

  Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,

  Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,

  But only Chaos, without form or place.

  Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered

  Things he had dreamed but could not understand,

  While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered

  In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.

  They danced insanely to the high, thin whining

  Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,

  Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining

  Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.

  “I am His Messenger,” the daemon said,

  As in contempt he struck his Master’s head.

  XXIII. Mirage

  I do not know if ever it existed—

  That lost world floating dimly on Time’s stream—

  And yet I see it often, violet-misted,

  And shimmering at the back of some vague dream.

  There were strange towers and curious lapping rivers,

  Labyrinths of wonder, and low vaults of light,

  And bough-crossed skies of flame, like that which quivers

  Wistfully just before a winter’s night.

  Great moors led off to sedgy shores unpeopled,

  Where vast birds wheeled, while on a windswept hill

  There was a village, ancient and white-steepled,

  With evening chimes for which I listen still.

  I do not know what land it is—or dare

  Ask when or why I was, or will be, there.

  XXIV. The Canal

  Somewhere in dream there is an evil place

  Where tall, deserted buildings crowd along

  A deep, black, narrow channel, reeking strong

  Of frightful things whence oily currents race.

  Lanes with old walls half meeting overhead

  Wind off to streets one may or may not know,

  And feeble moonlight sheds a spectral glow

  Over long rows of windows, dark and dead.

  There are no footfalls, and the one soft sound

  Is of the oily water as it glides

  Under stone bridges, and along the sides

  Of its deep flume, to some vague ocean bound.

  None lives to tell when that stream washed away

  Its dream-lost region from the world of clay.

  XXV. St. Toad’s

  “Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” I heard him scream

  As I plunged into those mad lanes that wind

  In
labyrinths obscure and undefined

  South of the river where old centuries dream.

  He was a furtive figure, bent and ragged,

  And in a flash had staggered out of sight,

  So still I burrowed onward in the night

  Toward where more roof-lines rose, malign and jagged.

  No guide-book told of what was lurking here—

  But now I heard another old man shriek:

  “Beware St.Toad’s cracked chimes!” And growing weak,

  I paused, when a third greybeard croaked in fear:

  “Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” Aghast, I fled—

  Till suddenly that black spire loomed ahead.

  XXVI. The Familiars

  John Whateley lived about a mile from town,

  Up where the hills began to huddle thick;

  We never thought his wits were very quick,

  Seeing the way he let his farm run down.

  He used to waste his time on some queer books

  He’d found around the attic of his place,

  Till funny lines got creased into his face,

  And folks all said they didn’t like his looks.

  When he began those night-howls we declared

  He’d better be locked up away from harm,

  So three men from the Aylesbury town farm

  Went for him—but came back alone and scared.

  They’d found him talking to two crouching things

  That at their step flew off on great black wings.

  XXVII. The Elder Pharos

  From Leng, where rocky peaks climb bleak and bare

  Under cold stars obscure to human sight,

  There shoots at dusk a single beam of light

  Whose far blue rays make shepherds whine in prayer.

  They say (though none has been there) that it comes

  Out of a pharos in a tower of stone,

  Where the last Elder One lives on alone,

  Talking to Chaos with the beat of drums.

  The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken mask

  Of yellow, whose queer folds appear to hide

  A face not of this earth, though none dares ask

  Just what those features are, which bulge inside.

  Many, in man’s first youth, sought out that glow,

  But what they found, no one will ever know.

  XXVIII. Expectancy

  I cannot tell why some things hold for me

  A sense of unplumbed marvels to befall,

  Or of a rift in the horizon’s wall

  Opening to worlds where only gods can be.

  There is a breathless, vague expectancy,