"Nemesis" (1917) by H. P. Lovecraft

"Nemesis"

© 1917

by
 

H. P. Lovecraft 

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 presence 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-ridden mountains
  That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-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 wall;
Strange figures discordantly 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 loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the pharaohs 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.

END.

"The City in the Sea" (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe, with Commentary discussing its relationship to the Cthulhu Mythos

 

“The City in the Sea”

© 1845

by

Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvelous shrine
Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in the air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye —
Not the gaily-jeweled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
The hours are breathing faint and low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

END.

===================================================

COMMENTARY, with especial regard to the Cthulhu Mythos:

Poe first published this in a substantially-different version as “The Doomed City” in 1831, and then in revised form as “The City of Sin” in 1836.  It first appeared in its final  version as “The City in the Sea” in 1845.

The city is ruled by Death, whom Poe sees as worse than the Devil:  note that when it is finally drawn down to the infernal regions, the powers of Hell honor the City of Sin.  This seems to be a purely Judeo-Christian conception, as the connections between the Devil, Sin and Death date back to the tale of the Garden of Eden in Genesis; the anthropomorphization of Death at least to medieval times; and of Sin at least to Milton’s Paradise Lost (and probably back to the medieval morality plays).

Aside from its substantial beauty, the poem is also of interest to us as it was clearly one of the sources of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.  Lovecraft was a great admirer of Poe, and himself a weird poet of no small talent, and there are themes in this poem which anticipate the Mythos.  The reasons why this poem would especially have touched him are obvious:  it is directly weird fantasy or horror; and Lovecraft had a personal fear of the sea and hence found horror stories set in the sea especially terrifying.

The City of Sin is a “strange sunken city” lying “far down within the dim West” … Poe (though American) may have had in mind medieval concepts of (the Atlantic) Ocean as the realm of Death; Lovecraft located his R’lyeh “far down within the dim West” from the Americas, in the South Pacific.  Like R’lyeh,

There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.

Note that the towers “tremble not” despite the fact that they are “time-eaten” – they show the signs of great age but are still intact.

As to it being a city of the dead, people who think of R’lyeh in connection with the Deep Ones forget that it was mainly the city of the Cthulhi, and that they there lie in seeming death:  the Deep Ones, who do not mind living at tremendous oceanic depths, merely tend the city of their masters.  Cthulhu and his kind may seem dead, but

That is not dead which can eternal lie

And with strange aeons even Death may die.

(Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu")

they are in fact only sleeping in suspended animation, awaiting the day when the stars are right and they can rise to reclaim the Earth.  Over the City of Sin

… from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

just as great Cthulhu waits in his temple, the highest structure on the central mountain of R’lyeh, which overlooks the ancient subcontinent-wide  megalopolis.

At the end of the poem, some unnamed geological cataclysm is about to draw the City of Sin down to the infernal regions where

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

which is physically the opposite but substantially the identical destiny claimed (by the Cthulhu-cult) for R’lyeh.  When the “stars are right,” R’lyeh will rise from the sea (instead of sinking through the crust) and great Cthulhu become the supreme Lord of evil upon the Earth (hell shall do him reverence).

Thus, aside from its great inherent merits as a poem, “The City in the Sea” is one of the major inspirations for at least two Cthulhu Mythos stories:  “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928) and “Dagon” (1919).

END.

The Star-Rover

"The Star-Rover"

By Yael R. Dragwyla©

1984, 1997 by Yael R. Dragwyla

Across a world too free and wide
For me, I see him stride;
The plains of ice lie white beneath the sun,
And when the day's course is run
They turn to flame and cobalt,
Then to diamonds on black silk.
The tumbled giant's blocks
Of basalt rocks
Moraine across the glaring land,
Dropped there by a careless angel's hand
After Creation's work was done,
To wait for Weather,
Nature's contract-salvager,
To cart them off for making other worlds.
In this world of blowing rock
And adamant ice he stands,
Shielding glare from his questing eyes
With impatient hands,
Searching the skies
For a bridge to other worlds
And other plains
And savannas green and golden
Under yellow suns,
Maroon mountains
Under Tyrian moons
And violet stars,
Topaz rivers
Under rainbow skies,
And the sight of another
Human face.
He paces, all alone,
Relentlessly, then stops
And once again looks out into space,
Remembering green gravity wells
And golden suns,
Remembering blue time,
Hurtling down amethyst canyons of extension,
Measured by dimensions not of mass, but music.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And then, down from firedeeps
Of emptiness, there sweeps
A saffron buttress of flame;
He calls her name,
Raging with joy,
And runs to meet her!
And now he will go home again -
Hah! Don't believe it!
Cradles comfort and feed -
But glory nourishes the soul.
And so, back into the black hole
Of uncertainty he'll go again;
Each time may be his last
(This one almost was -
Remember that fragile,
Silver, crumpled thing
Lying broken on the plain behind,
With seventeen smashed eternities
Stillborn in the charred womb
Of its cindered guts,
And only you survived?) . . .
But then, a man can die of fear
In a nightmare in his own bed.
Better, at least, to die awake,
Knowing what it is that kills you.
And who knows? On the other hand,
You may yet find El Dorado
Or the Fountain of Youth -
At least, there's the hope
Of one more binge and one more woman!
- All right, all right, admit it:
Who knows why?
The stars, my friend, have got you by the guts,
And the only way to stop the pain
Is to draw close to all of them again -
Out there where the Phoenix nests
And the Lords of Chaos reign . . .
And where you see, now and again,
The uncertain ghosts of angels' footprints
And hear moaning whispers of joy
From behind the gates of the Lord of Hosts
And out of the silken green glades of Pan.

=================================

Comments:  This poem is from a fine Northwestern lady who is a lifelong science fiction, fantasy and horror fan, and one of the simultaneously most logical and mystical people I know.  I welcome her to Fantastic Worlds, and hope to see more of her here. :-)

Yael Dragwyla is Polaris93 on Livejournal; many more of her writings can be found here.