Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived 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 whirled 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-forked lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out
of the green waters rise.
I have plunged like a deer through the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presense that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove,
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers
through dead branches above.
I have stumbled by cave-riddled mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the frog-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 scanned the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon rising up from the valleys
Shows the tapestried things on the walls;
Strange figures dischordantly woven, that I cannot
endure to recall.
I have peered from the casements in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roofed 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 look snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes
what it never can cheer.
I was old when the pharoahs first mounted
The jewel-decked 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.
Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived 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.
Nemesis by HP Lovecraft
HP Lovecraft eh?
ReplyDeleteHave you read his short stories? They're on Wikipedia for free as well as a scary ass picture of him being scary.
It is a beautiful poem though.
No I haven't actually, but I'll check it out. I just randomly came it across the poem today.
ReplyDelete