Temples and cities pois’d in air
And blazing glories—sphere on sphere.
On Receiving a Picture of Swans
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.
The Outpost
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.
Pacifist War Song—1917
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!
The Peace Advocate
(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 vic
ar 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.
The Poe-et’s Nightmare
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 namel
ess 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
The Complete H.P. Lovecraft Collection (Xist Classics) Page 213
