Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology

by H. P. Lovecraft

  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!

  Pacifist War Song—1917

  Written: March 1917

  First Published: The Tryout,

  Vol. 3, No. 4 (March 1917), Page 10

  We are the valiant Knights of Peace

  Who prattle for the Right:

  Our banner is of snowy fleece,

  Inscribed: “TOO PROUD TO FIGHT!”

  By sweet Chautauqua’s flow’ry banks

  We love to sing and play,

  But should we spy a foeman’s ranks,

  We’d proudly run away!

  When Prussian fury sweeps the main

  Our freedom to deny;

  Of tyrant laws we ne’er complain,

  But gladsomely comply!

  We do not fear the submarines

  That plough the troubled foam;

  We scorn the ugly old machines—

  And safely stay at home!

  They say our country’s close to war,

  And soon must man the guns;

  But we see naught to struggle for—

  We love the gentle Huns!

  What tho’ their hireling Greaser bands

  Invade our southern plains?

  We well can spare those boist’rous lands,

  Content with what remains!

  Our fathers were both rude and bold,

  And would not live like brothers;

  But we are of a finer mould—

  We’re much more like our mothers!

  Waste Paper

  (A Poem of Profound Insignificance)

  Written: late 1922? early 1923?

  First Published: A Winter Wish.

  By H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by Tom Collins.

  Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press, (1977), Pages 138–141

  Πάντα γέλως καί πάντα κόνις καί πάντα τό μηδέν

  Out of the reaches of illimitable light

  The blazing planet grew, and forc’d to life

  Unending cycles of progressive strife

  And strange mutations of undying light

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

  And thoughts repeated and become a blight,

  And cheap rum-hounds with moonshine hootch made tight,

  And quite contrite to see the flight of fright so bright

  I used to ride my bicycle in the night

  With a dandy acetylene lantern that cost $3.00

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

  Meet me tonight in dreamland… BAH

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

  After we left it but before it was sold

  And play on a zobo with two other boys.

  We called ourselves the Blackstone Military Band

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

  In the spring of the year, in the silver rain

  When petal by petal the blossoms fall

  And the mocking birds call

  And the whippoorwill sings, Marguerite.

  The first cinema show in our town opened in 1906

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

  And moving beams shot weirdly thro’ the dark

  And spit tobacco seldom hit the mark.

  Have you read Dickens’ American Notes?

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

  Under green trees in the country

  And he used to believe in religion and the weather.

  “Shantih, shantih, shantih”… Shanty House

  Was the name of a novel by I forget whom

  Published serially in the All-Story Weekly

  Before it was a weekly. Advt.

  Disillusion is wonderful, I’ve been told,

  And I take quinine to stop a cold

  But it makes my ears ring… always ring…

  Always ringing in my ears…

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

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

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

  Dancing on the graves in the graveyard

  Where life is buried; life and beauty

  Life and art and love and duty

  Ah, there, sweet cutie.

  Stung!

  Out of the night that covers me

  Black as the pit from pole to pole

  I never quote things straight except by accident.

  Sophistication! Sophistication!

  You are the idol of our nation

  Each fellow has

  Fallen for jazz

  And we’ll give the past a merry razz

  Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber

  And fellow-guestship with the glutless worm.

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

  Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring,

  And the Governor-General of Canada is Lord Byng

  Whose ancestor was shot or hung,

  I forget which, the good die young.

  Here’s to your ripe old age,

  Copyright, 1847, by Joseph Miller,

  Entered according to act of Congress

  In the office of the librarian of Congress

  America was discovered in 1492

  This way out.

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

  Out in the rain on the elevated

  Crated, sated, all mismated.

  Twelve seats on this bench,

  How quaint.

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

  Express to Park Ave., Car Following.

  No, we had it cleaned with the sand blast.

  I know it ought to be torn down.

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

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

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

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

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

  From loved ones down on the farm

  Fond wife and mother, sister and brother…”

&
nbsp; Bootleggers all and you’re another

  In the shade of the old apple tree

  ’Neath the old cherry tree sweet Marie

  The Conchologist’s First Book

  By Edgar Allan Poe

  Stubbed his toe

  On a broken brick that didn’t shew

  Or a banana peel

  In the fifth reel

  By George Creel

  It is to laugh

  And quaff

  It makes you stout and hale,

  And all my days I’ll sing the praise

  Of Ivory Soap

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

  The stag at eve had drunk his fill

  The thirsty hart look’d up the hill

  And craned his neck just as a feeler

  To advertise the Double-Dealer.

  William Congreve was a gentleman

  O art what sins are committed in thy name

  For tawdry fame and fleeting flame

  And everything, ain’t dat a shame?

  Mah Creole Belle, ah lubs yo’ well;

  Aroun’ mah heart you hab cast a spell

  But I can’t learn to spell pseudocracy

  Because there ain’t no such word.

  And I says to Lizzie, if Joe was my feller

  I’d teach him to go to dances with that

  Rat, bat, cat, hat, flat, plat, fat

  Fry the fat, fat the fry

  You’ll be a drug-store by and by.

  Get the hook!

  Above the lines of brooding hills

  Rose spires that reeked of nameless ills,

  And ghastly shone upon the sight

  In ev’ry flash of lurid light

  To be continued.

  No smoking.

  Smoking on four rear seats.

  Fare win return to 5¢ after August 1st

  Except outside the Cleveland city limits.

  In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir

  Strangers pause to shed a tear;

  Henry Fielding wrote Tom Jones.

  And cursed be he that moves my bones.

  Good night, good night, the stars are bright

  I saw the Leonard-Tendler fight

  Farewell, farewell, O go to hell.

  Nobody home

  In the shantih.

  This poem is a parody of T. S. Elliot’s The Waste Land, and mondernist poetry in general, which Lovecraft referred to as a “practically meaningless collection of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps in general”.

  Dead Passion’s Flame

  (A Poem by Blank Frailty)

  Written: Summer 1935

  First Published: A Winter Wish.

  By H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by Tom Collins.

  Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press (1977), Page 136

  Ah, Passion, like a voice—that buds!

  With many thorns… that sharply stick:

  Recalls to me the longing of our bloods…

  And—makes my wearied heart requick!……

  Arcadia

  By Head Balledup

  Written: Summer 1935

  First Published: A Winter Wish.

  By H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by Tom Collins.

  Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press (1977), Page 136

  O give me the life of the village,

  Uninhibited, free, and sweet;

  The place where the arts all flourish,

  Grove Court and Christopher Street.

  I am sick of the old conventions,

  And critics who will not praise,

  So sing ho for the open spaces,

  And aesthetes with kindly ways.

  Here every bard is a genius,

  And artists are Raphaels,

  And above the roofs of Patchin Place

  The Muse of Talent dwells.

  Life’s Mystery

  Written: ?

  First Published: A Winter Wish.

  By H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by Tom Collins.

  Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press (1977), Page 137

  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

  A Garden

  Written: April 1917

  First Published: The Vagrant,

  (Spring), Page 60

  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!

  Sunset

  Written: December 1917

  First Published: The Tryout,

  Vol. 4, No. 1 (December 1917), Page 8

  The cloudless day is richer at its close;

  A golden glory settles on the lea;

  Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool repose

  To mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.

  And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light,

  The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines;

  Freed form the noonday glare, the favour’d sight

  Increasing grace in earth and sky divines.

  But ere the purest radiance crowns the green,

  Or fairest lustre fills th’ expectant grove,

  The twilight thickens, and the fleeting scene

  Leaves but a hallow’d memory of love!

  Providence

  Written: 26th September 1924

  First Published: The Brooklynite,

  Vol. 14, No. 14 (November 1924), Pages 2-3

  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 hav
e 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!

  Christmas

  Written: November 1920

  First Published: The Tryout,

  Vol. 6, No. 11 (November 1920), Page 16

  The cottage hearth beams warm and bright,

  The candles gaily glow;

  The stars emit a kinder light

  Above the drifted snow.

  Down from the sky a magic steals

  To glad the passing year,

  And belfries sing with joyous peals,

  For Christmastide is here!

  Christmas Greetings

  Written: November 1920

  First Published: The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft.

  San Francisco, CA: Night Shade Books (2001):

  “To Eugene B. Kuntz et al”

  Page 310“To Laurie A. Sawyer”

  Page 316“To Sonia H. Greene”

  Page 322“To Rheinhart Kleiner”

  Page 324“To Felis (Frank Belknap Long’s cat)”

  Pages 324-325“To Annie E. P. Gamwell”

  Page 330“To Felis (Frank Belknap Long’s cat)”

  To Eugene B. Kuntz et al

  May good St. Nick, like as a bird of night,

  Bring thee rich blessings in his annual flight;

  Long by thy chimney rest his pond’rous pack,