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
Lines on Gen. Robert Edward Lee
“Si veris magna paratur
Fama bonis, et si successu nuda remoto
Inspicitur virtus, quicquid laudamus in ullo
Majorum, fortuna fuit.”
—Lucan.
Whilst martial echoes o’er the wave resound,
And Europe’s gore incarnadines the ground;
Today no foreign hero we bemoan,
But count the glowing virtues of our own!
Illustrious LEE! around whose honour’d name
Entwines a patriot’s and a Christian’s fame;
With whose just praise admiring nations ring,
And whom repenting foes contritely sing!
When first our land fraternal fury bore,
And Sumter’s guns alarm’d the anxious shore;
When Faction’s reign ancestral rights o’erthrew,
And sunder’d States a mutual hatred knew;
Then clash’d contending chiefs of kindred line,
In flesh to suffer and in fame to shine.
But o’er them all, majestic in his might,
Rose LEE, unrivall’d, to sublimest height:
With torturing choice defy’d opposing Fate,
And shunn’d Temptation for his native State!
Thus Washington his monarch’s rule o’erturn’d
When young Columbia with rebellion burn’d.
And what in Washington the world reveres,
In LEE with equal magnitude appears.
Our nation’s Father, crown’d with vict’ry’s bays,
Enjoys a loving land’s eternal praise:
Let, then, our hearts with equal rev’rence greet
His proud successor, rising o’er defeat!
Around his greatness pour disheartening woes,
But still he tow’rs above his conqu’ring foes.
Silence! ye jackal herd that vainly blame
Th’ unspotted leader by a traitor’s name:
If such was LEE, let blushing Justice mourn,
And trait’rous Liberty endure our scorn!
As Philopoemen once sublimely strove,
And earn’d declining Hellas’ thankful love;
So follow’d LEE the purest patriot’s part,
And wak’d the worship of the grateful heart:
The South her soul in body’d form discerns;
The North from LEE a nobler freedom learns!
Attend! ye sons of Albion’s ancient race,
Whate’er your country, and whate’er your place:
LEE’S valiant deeds, tho’ dear to Southern song,
To all our Saxon strain as well belong.
Courage like his the parent Island won,
And led an Empire past the setting sun;
To realms unknown our laws and language bore;
Rais’d England’s banner on the desert shore;
Crush’d the proud rival, and subdu’d the sea
For ages past, and aeons yet to be!
From Scotia’s hilly bounds the paean rolls,
And Afric’s distant Cape great LEE extols;
The sainted soul and manly mien combine
To grace Britannia’s and Virginia's line!
As dullards now in thoughtless fervour prate
Of shameful peace, and sing th’ unmanly State;
As churls their piping reprobations shriek,
And damn the heroes that protect the weak;
Let LEE’S brave shade the timid throng accost,
And give them back the manhood they have lost!
What kindlier spirit, breathing from on high,
Can teach us how to live and how to die?
The Messenger
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!
Nathicana
It was in the pale garden of Zaïs;
The mist-shrouded gardens of Zaïs,
Where blossoms the white nephalotë,
The redolent herald of midnight.
There slumber the still lakes of crystal,
And streamlets that flow without murm’ring;
Smooth streamlets from caverns of Kathos
Where brood the calm spirits of twilight.
And over the lakes and the streamlets
Are bridges of pure alabaster,
White bridges all cunningly carven
With figures of fairies and daemons.
Here glimmer strange suns and strange planets,
And strange is the crescent Banapis
That sets ’yond the ivy-grown ramparts
Where thickens the dust of the evening.
Here fall the white vapours of Yabon;
And here in the swirl of vapours
I saw the divine Nathicana;
The garlanded, white Nathicana;
The slender, black-hair’d Nathicana;
The sloe-ey’d, red-lipp’d Nathicana;
The silver-voic’d, sweet Nathicana;
The pale-rob’d, belov’d Nathicana.
And ever was she my belovèd,
From ages when Time was unfashion’d;
From days when the stars were not fashion’d
Nor any thing fashion’d but Yabon.
And here dwelt we ever and ever,
The innocent children of Zaïs,
At peace in the paths and the arbours,
White-crown’d with the blest nephalotë.
How oft would we float in the twilight
O’er flow’r-cover’d pastures and hillsides
All white with the lowly astalthon;
The lowly yet lovely astalthon,
And dream in a world made of dreaming
The dreams that are fairer than Aidenn;
Bright dreams that are truer than reason!
So dream’d and so lov’d we thro’ ages,
Till came the curs’d season of Dzannin;
The daemon-damn’d season of Dzannin;
When red shone the suns and the planets,
And red gleamed the crescent Banapis,
And red fell the vapours of Yabon.
Then redden’d the blossoms and streamlets
And lakes that lay under the bridges,
And even the calm alabaster
Glow’d pink with uncanny reflections
Till all the carv’d fairies and daemons
Leer’d redly from the backgrounds of shadow.
Now redden’d my vision, and madly
I strove to peer thro’ the dense curtain
And glimpse the divine Nathicana;
The pure, ever-pale Nathicana;
The lov’d, the unchang’d Nathicana.
But vortex on vortex of madness
Beclouded my labouring vision;
My damnable, reddening vision
That built a new world for my seeing;
A new world of re
dness and darkness,
A horrible coma call’d living.
So now in this coma call’d living
I view the bright phantons of beauty;
The false, hollow phantoms of beauty
That cloak all the evils of Dzannin.
I view them with infinite longing,
So like do they seem to my lov’d one;
So shapely and fair like my lov’d one;
Yet foul from their eyes shines their evil;
Their cruel and pitiless evil,
More evil than Thaphron and Latgoz,
Twice ill for its gorgeous concealment.
And only in slumbers of midnight
Appears the lost maid Nathicana,
The pallid, the pure Nathicana,
Who fades at the glance of the dreamer.
Again and again do I seek her;
I woo with deep draughts of Plathotis,
Deep draughts brew’d in wine of Astarte
And strengthen’d with tears of long weeping.
I yearn for the gardens of Zaïs;
The lovely lost garden of Zaïs
Where blossoms the white nephalotë,
The redolent herald of midnight.
The last potent draught I am brewing;
A draught that the daemons delight in;
A draught that will banish the redness;
The horrible coma call’d living.
Soon, soon, if I fail not in brewing,
The redness and madness will vanish,
And deep in the worm-peopled darkness
Will rot the base chains that hav bound me.
Once more shall the gardens of Zaïs
Dawn white on my long-tortur’d vision,
And there midst the vapours of Yabon
Will stand the divine Nathicana;
The deathless, restor’d Nathicana
Whose like is not met with in living.
Nemesis
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 primoridal 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.
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.
The Nightmare Lake
There is a lake in distant Zan,
Beyond the wonted haunts of man,
Where broods alone in a hideous state
A spirit dead and desolate;
A spirit ancient and unholy,
Heavy with fearsome melancholy,
Which from the waters dull and dense
Draws vapors cursed with pestilence.
Around the banks, a mire of clay,
Sprawl things offensive in decay,
And curious birds that reach that shore
Are seen by mortals nevermore.
Here shines by day the searing sun
On glassy wastes beheld by none,
And here by night pale moonbeams flow
Into the deeps that yawn below.
In nightmares only is it told
What scenes beneath those beams unfold;
What scenes, too old for human sight,
Lie sunken there in endless night;
For in those depths there only pace
The shadows of a voiceless race.
One midnight, redolent of ill,
I saw that lake, asleep and still;
While in the lurid sky there rode
A gibbous moon that glow’d and glow’d.
I saw the stretching marshy shore,
And the foul things those marshes bore:
Lizards and snakes convuls’d and dying;
Ravens and vampires putrefying;
All these, and hov’ring o’er the dead,
Narcophagi that on them fed.
And as the dreadful moon climb’d high,
Fright’ning the stars from out the sky,
I saw the lake’s dull water glow
Till sunken things appear’d below.
There shone unnumber’d fathoms down,
The tow’rs of a forgotten town;
The tarnish’d domes and mossy walls;
Weed-tangled spires and empty halls;
Deserted fanes and vaults of dread,
And streets of gold uncoveted.
These I beheld, and saw beside
A horde of shapeless shadows glide;
A noxious horde which to my glance
Seem’d moving in a hideous dance
Round slimy sepulchres that lay
Beside a never-travell’d way.
Straight from those tombs a heaving rose
That vex’d the waters’ dull repose,
While lethal shades of upper space
Howl’d at the moon’s sardonic face.
Then sank the lake within its bed,
Suck’d down to caverns of the dead,
Till from the reeking, new-stript earth
Curl’d foetid fumes of noisome birth.
About the city, nigh uncover’d,
The mo
nstrous 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!
Ode for July Fourth, 1917
As Columbia’s brave scions, in anger array’d,
Once defy’d a proud monarch and built a new nation;
’Gainst their brothers of Britain unsheath’d the sharp blade
That hath ne’er met defeat nor endur’d desecration;
So must we in this hour
Show our valour and pow’r,
And dispel the black perils that over us low’r:
Whilst the sons of Britannia, no longer our foes,
Will rejoice in our triumphs and strengthen our blows!
See the banners of Liberty float in the breeze
That plays light o’er the regions our fathers defended;
Hear the voice of the million resound o’er the leas,
As the deeds of the past are proclaim’d and commended;
And in splendour on high
Where our flags proudly fly,
See the folds we tore down flung again to the sky:
For the Emblem of England, in kinship unfurl’d,
Shall divide with Old Glory the praise of the world!
Bury’d now are the hatreds of subject and King,
And the strife that once sunder’d an Empire hath vanish’d.
With the fame of the Saxon the heavens shall ring
As the vultures of darkness are baffled and banish’d;
And the broad British sea,
Of her enemies free,
Shall in tribute bow gladly, Columbia to thee:
For the friends of the Right, in the field side by side,
Form a fabric of Freedom no hand can divide!
On Reading Lord Dunsany’s
Book of Wonder
The hours of night unheeded fly,
And in the grate the embers fade;
Vast shadows one by one pass by
In silent daemon cavalcade.
But still the magic volume holds
The raptur’d eye in realms apart,
And fulgent sorcery enfolds
The willing mind and eager heart.
The lonely room no more is there—
For to the sight in pomp appear
The Complete H.P. Lovecraft Collection (Xist Classics) Page 212
