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Worlds Without End Blog

H.P. Lovecraft: A Bit of a Pessimist Posted at 11:09 PM by Jonathan McDonald

jynnantonnyx

H.P. LovecraftAs part of our ongoing effort to underscore the classier side of genre literature, we’ve decided to keep pushing forward with our Genre Poetry series. We may be well out of the Month of Horrors, but that provides no safety from Friday the 13th! In keeping with the day’s traditional fears, this installment of Genre Poetry comes from the American patriarch of horror himself, H.P. Lovecraft, writing about what he knows best…

Despair
by H.P. Lovecraft

O’er the midnight moorlands crying,
Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,
In the night-wind madly flying,
      Hellish forms with streaming hair;
In the barren branches creaking,
By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,
Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;
      Damn’d daemons of despair.

Once, I think I half remember,
Ere the grey skies of November
Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,
      Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;
Skies that now are dark were beaming,
Gold and azure, splendid seeming
Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—
      Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

But the stream of Time, swift flowing,
Brings the torment of half-knowing—
Dimly rushing, blindly going
      Past the never-trodden lea;
And the voyager, repining,
Sees the wicked death-fires shining,
Hears the wicked petrel’s whining
      As he helpless drifts to sea.

Evil wings in ether beating;
Vultures at the spirit eating;
Things unseen forever fleeting
      Black against the leering sky.
Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,
Clawing fiends of future sadness,
Mingle in a cloud of madness
      Ever on the soul to lie.

Thus the living, lone and sobbing,
In the throes of anguish throbbing,
With the loathsome Furies robbing
      Night and noon of peace and rest.
But beyond the groans and grating
Of abhorrent Life, is waiting
Sweet Oblivion, culminating
      All the years of fruitless quest.

(Thanks to the H.P. Lovecraft Archive for hosting this and so many other works from the author.)

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