Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated) (250 page)

The Nightmare La
ke

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
’

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.

Christm
as

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!

Waste Pap
er

A Poem of Profound Insignificance

 ½Ä± ³»É º±1 À½Ä± º@½¹Â º±1 À½Ä± ÄA ¼·´½

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. . . .”
     
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.

Providen
ce

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 have 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!

The Ca
ts

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!