Fungi from Yuggoth (lovecraft mythos) Read online

  And yet I see it often, violet-misted,

  And shimmering at the back of some vague dream.

  There were strange towers and curious lapping rivers,

  Labyrinths of wonder, and low vaults of light,

  And bough-crossed skies of flame, like that which quivers

  Wistfully just before a winter’s night.

  Great moors led off to sedgy shores unpeopled,

  Where vast birds wheeled, while on a windswept hill

  There was a village, ancient and white-steepled,

  With evening chimes for which I listen still.

  I do not know what land it is – or dare

  Ask when or why I was, or will be, there.

  XXIV. The Canal

  Somewhere in dream there is an evil place

  Where tall, deserted buildings crowd along

  A deep, black, narrow channel, reeking strong

  Of frightful things whence oily currents race.

  Lanes with old walls half meeting overhead

  Wind off to streets one may or may not know,

  And feeble moonlight sheds a spectral glow

  Over long rows of windows, dark and dead.

  There are no footfalls, and the one soft sound

  Is of the oily water as it glides

  Under stone bridges, and along the sides

  Of its deep flume, to some vague ocean bound.

  None lives to tell when that stream washed away

  Its dream-lost region from the world of clay.

  XXV. St. toad’s

  “Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” I heard him scream

  As I plunged into those mad lanes that wind

  In labyrinths obscure and undefined

  South of the river where old centuries dream.

  He was a furtive figure, bent and ragged,

  And in a flash had staggered out of sight,

  So still I burrowed onward in the night

  Toward where more roof-lines rose, malign and jagged.

  No guide-book told of what was lurking here –

  But now I heard another old man shriek:

  “Beware St.Toad’s cracked chimes!” And growing weak,

  I paused, when a third greybeard croaked in fear:

  “Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes!” Aghast, I fled –

  Till suddenly that black spire loomed ahead.

  XXVI. The Familiars

  John Whateley lived about a mile from town,

  Up where the hills begin to huddle thick;

  We never thought his wits were very quick,

  Seeing the way he let his farm run down.

  He used to waste his time on some queer books

  He’d found around the attic of his place,

  Till funny lines got creased into his face,

  And folks all said they didn’t like his looks.

  When he began those night-howls we declared

  He’d better be locked up away from harm,

  So three men from the Aylesbury town farm

  Went for him – but came back alone and scared.

  They’d found him talking to two crouching things

  That at their step flew off on great black wings.

  XXVII. The Elder Pharos

  From Leng, where rocky peaks climb bleak and bare

  Under cold stars obscure to human sight,

  There shoots at dusk a single beam of light

  Whose far blue rays make shepherds whine in prayer.

  They say (though none has been there) that it comes

  Out of a pharos in a tower of stone,

  Where the last Elder One lives on alone,

  Talking to Chaos with the beat of drums.

  The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken mask

  Of yellow, whose queer folds appear to hide

  A face not of this earth, though none dares ask

  Just what those features are, which bulge inside.

  Many, in man’s first youth, sought out that glow,

  But what they found, no one will ever know.

  XXVIII. Expectancy

  I cannot tell why some things hold for me

  A sense of unplumbed marvels to befall,

  Or of a rift in the horizon’s wall

  Opening to worlds where only gods can be.

  There is a breathless, vague expectancy,

  As of vast ancient pomps I half recall,

  Or wild adventures, uncorporeal,

  Ecstasy-fraught, and as a day-dream free.

  It is in sunsets and strange city spires,

  Old villages and woods and misty downs,

  South winds, the sea, low hills, and lighted towns,

  Old gardens, half-heard songs, and the moon’s fires.

  But though its lure alone makes life worth living,

  None gains or guesses what it hints at giving.

  XXIX. Nostalgia

  Once every year, in autumn’s wistful glow,

  The birds fly out over an ocean waste,

  Calling and chattering in a joyous haste

  To reach some land their inner memories know.

  Great terraced gardens where bright blossoms blow,

  And lines of mangoes luscious to the taste,

  And temple-groves with branches interlaced

  Over cool paths – all these their vague dreams shew.

  They search the sea for marks of their old shore –

  For the tall city, white and turreted –

  But only empty waters stretch ahead,

  So that at last they turn away once more.

  Yet sunken deep where alien polyps throng,

  The old towers miss their lost, remembered song.

  XXX. Background

  I never can be tied to raw, new things,

  For I first saw the light in an old town,

  Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down

  To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.

  Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams

  Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,

  And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes –

  These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.

  Such treasures, left from times of cautious leaven,

  Cannot but loose the hold of flimsier wraiths

  That flit with shifting ways and muddled faiths

  Across the changeless walls of earth and heaven.

  They cut the moment’s thongs and leave me free

  To stand alone before eternity.

  XXXI. The Dweller

  It had been old when Babylon was new;

  None knows how long it slept beneath that mound,

  Where in the end our questing shovels found

  Its granite blocks and brought it back to view.

  There were vast pavements and foundation-walls,

  And crumbling slabs and statues, carved to shew

  Fantastic beings of some long ago

  Past anything the world of man recalls.

  And then we saw those stone steps leading down

  Through a choked gate of graven dolomite

  To some black haven of eternal night

  Where elder signs and primal secrets frown.

  We cleared a path – but raced in mad retreat

  When from below we heard those clumping feet.

  XXXII. Alienation

  His solid flesh had never been away,

  For each dawn found him in his usual place,

  But every night his spirit loved to race

  Through gulfs and worlds remote from common day.

  He had seen Yaddith, yet retained his mind,

  And come back safely from the Ghooric zone,

  When one still night across curved space was thrown

  That beckoning piping from the voids behind.

  He waked that morning as an older man,

  And nothing since has looked the same to him.

  Objects around float nebulous and dim �
�

  False, phantom trifles of some vaster plan.

  His folk and friends are now an alien throng

  To which he struggles vainly to belong.

  XXXIII. Harbour Whistles

  Over old roofs and past decaying spires

  The harbour whistles chant all through the night;

  Throats from strange ports, and beaches far and white,

  And fabulous oceans, ranged in motley choirs.

  Each to the other alien and unknown,

  Yet all, by some obscurely focussed force

  From brooding gulfs beyond the Zodiac’s course,

  Fused into one mysterious cosmic drone.

  Through shadowy dreams they send a marching line

  Of still more shadowy shapes and hints and views;

  Echoes from outer voids, and subtle clues

  To things which they themselves cannot define.

  And always in that chorus, faintly blent,

  We catch some notes no earth-ship ever sent.

  XXXIV. Recapture

  The way led down a dark, half-wooded heath

  Where moss-grey boulders humped above the mould,

  And curious drops, disquieting and cold,

  Sprayed up from unseen streams in gulfs beneath.

  There was no wind, nor any trace of sound

  In puzzling shrub, or alien-featured tree,

  Nor any view before – till suddenly,

  Straight in my path, I saw a monstrous mound.

  Half to the sky those steep sides loomed upspread,

  Rank-grassed, and cluttered by a crumbling flight

  Of lava stairs that scaled the fear-topped height

  In steps too vast for any human tread.

  I shrieked – and knew what primal star and year

  Had sucked me back from man’s dream-transient sphere!

  XXXV. Evening Star

  I saw it from that hidden, silent place

  Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in.

  It shone through all the sunset’s glories – thin

  At first, but with a slowly brightening face.

  Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,

  Beat on my sight as never it did of old;

  The evening star – but grown a thousandfold

  More haunting in this hush and solitude.

  It traced strange pictures on the quivering air –

  Half-memories that had always filled my eyes –

  Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies

  Of some dim life – I never could tell where.

  But now I knew that through the cosmic dome

  Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.

  XXXVI. Continuity

  There is in certain ancient things a trace

  Of some dim essence – more than form or weight;

  A tenuous aether, indeterminate,

  Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.

  A faint, veiled sign of continuities

  That outward eyes can never quite descry;

  Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,

  And out of reach except for hidden keys.

  It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow

  On old farm buildings set against a hill,

  And paint with life the shapes which linger still

  From centuries less a dream than this we know.

  In that strange light I feel I am not far

  From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.

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  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 04 February 2011

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