#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/10/05 -- Some Eerie Autumn Poetry

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 49: October 5, 2022

 

 

Some Eerie Autumn Poetry

 

Editor’s Note

                H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is regarded by literary scholars as the “Edgar Allan Poe of the 20th Century.” He was an imaginative author of “weird fiction” – a genre that combines science fiction, fantasy, and horror – and also an accomplished poet. His work has inspired, among others, the creators/writers of Babylon 5 and Doctor Who.

                This week, as the month of October begins, we have excerpts from Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth: A Sonnet Cycle, which he penned in late December 1929 and early January 1930. Yuggoth is the name of Pluto in HPL’s “weird fiction” and poetic writings. The sonnet cycle is a somewhat loosely-connected sequence of three dozen poems, in which the narrator describes how he procures and subsequently uses a book of esoteric lore to travel through time, space, and other dimensions. The poems excerpted here describe the beginning of the narrator’s adventures, a few stops that he makes along the way, and some concluding reflections on what he has learned from his cosmic travels.

 

The planet Pluto, as photographed by the New Horizons space probe in July 2015. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

Sonnet #1: “The Book”

The place was dark and dusty and half-lost

In tangles of old alleys near the quays,

Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,

And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.

Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,

Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,

Rotting from floor to roof — congeries

Of crumbling elder lore at little cost.

I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap

Took up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,

Trembling at curious words that seemed to keep

Some secret, monstrous if one only knew.

Then, looking for some seller old in craft,

I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.

 

Sonnet #2: “Pursuit”

I held the book beneath my coat, at pains

To hide the thing from sight in such a place;

Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanes

With often-turning head and nervous pace.

Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brick

Peered at me oddly as I hastened by,

And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sick

For a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.

No one had seen me take the thing — but still

A blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,

And I could guess what nighted worlds of ill

Lurked in that volume I had coveted.

The way grew strange — the walls alike and madding —

And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.

 

Sonnet #3: “The Key”

I do not know what windings in the waste

Of those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,

But on my porch I trembled, white with haste

To get inside and bolt the heavy door.

I had the book that told the hidden way

Across the void and through the space-hung screens

That hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,

And keep lost aeons to their own demesnes.

At last the key was mine to those vague visions

Of sunset spires and twilight woods that brood

Dim in the gulfs beyond this earth’s precisions,

Lurking as memories of infinitude.

The key was mine, but as I sat there mumbling,

The attic window shook with a faint fumbling.

 

Sonnet #13: “Hesperia”

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires

And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,

Opens great gates to some forgotten year

Of elder splendors and divine desires.

Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,

Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;

A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear

Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.

It is the land where beauty’s meaning flowers;

Where every unplaced memory has a source;

Where the great river Time begins its course

Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.

Dreams bring us close — but ancient lore repeats

That human tread has never soiled these streets.

 

Sonnet #14: “Star-Winds”

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,

Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours

Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,

But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.

The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,

And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,

Heeding geometries of outer space,

While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know

What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents

And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,

Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.

Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,

A dozen more of ours they sweep away!

 

The bright star Fomalhaut is visible from the American Midwest on autumn evenings above the southern horizon. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Sonnet #23: “Mirage”

I do not know if ever it existed —

That lost world floating dimly on Time’s stream —

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.

 

Sonnet #28: “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.

 

Sonnet #35: “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.

 

The planet Venus, as photographed by the Messenger space probe in June 2007. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Sonnet #36: “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 harboring 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 fixed mass whose sides the ages are.