Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft(772)

White and amazing to the lands around

That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose;

Crystal and ivory, sublimely crown’d

With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows.



And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang,

While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains;

Never a voice of elder marvels sang,

Nor any eye call’d up the hills and plains.



Thus down the years, till on one purple night

A drunken minstrel in his careless verse

Spoke the vile words that should not see the light,

And stirr’d the shadows of an ancient curse.



Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield;

So on the spot where that proud city stood,

The shuddering dawn no single stone reveal’d,

But fled the blackness of a primal wood.





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.





The Ancient Track



There was no hand to hold me back

That night I found the ancient track

Over the hill, and strained to see

The fields that teased my memory.

This tree, that wall — I knew them well,

And all the roofs and orchards fell

Familiarly upon my mind

As from a past not far behind.

I knew what shadows would be cast

When the late moon came up at last

From back of Zaman’s Hill, and how

The vale would shine three hours from now.

And when the path grew steep and high,

And seemed to end against the sky,

I had no fear of what might rest

Beyond that silhouetted crest.

Straight on I walked, while all the night

Grew pale with phosphorescent light,

And wall and farmhouse gable glowed

Unearthly by the climbing road.

There was the milestone that I knew —

“Two miles to Dunwich” — now the view

Of distant spire and roofs would dawn

With ten more upward paces gone. . . .



There was no hand to hold me back

That night I found the ancient track,

And reached the crest to see outspread

A valley of the lost and dead:

And over Zaman’s Hill the horn

Of a malignant moon was born,

To light the weeds and vines that grew

On ruined walls I never knew.

The fox-fire glowed in field and bog,

And unknown waters spewed a fog

Whose curling talons mocked the thought

That I had ever known this spot.

Too well I saw from the mad scene

That my loved past had never been —

Nor was I now upon the trail

Descending to that long-dead vale.

Around was fog — ahead, the spray

Of star-streams in the Milky Way. . . .

There was no hand to hold me back

That night I found the ancient track.





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.