for starry dust thou art

''the name "blasted heath" seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and i wondered how it had come into the folklore of a puritan people. then i saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery.

''it must, i thought as i viewed it, be the outcome of a fire; but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? ... there was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. ...

''in the evening i asked old people in arkham about the blasted heath, and what was meant by the phrase "strange days" which so many evasively muttered. speakers would not be exact; and because they all told me to pay no attention to old ammi pierce's crazy tales i sought him out the next morning. ...

''it all began, old ammi said, with the meteorite ... these were not haunted woods, and their fantastic dusk was never terrible till the strange days. then there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood. and by night all arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the nahum gardner place. ...

''then fell the time of fruit and harvest. the pears and apples slowly ripened, and nahum vowed that his ordhards were prospering as never before. the fruit was growing to phenomenal size and unwonted gloss, and in such abundance that extra barrels were ordered to handle the future crop. but with the ripening came sore disappointment; for of all that gorgeous array of specious lushiousness not one single jot was fit to eat.

''into the fine flavour of the pears and apples had crept a stealthy bitterness and sickishness, so that even the smallest bites induced a lasting disgust. it was the same with the melons and tomatoes, and nahum sadly saw that his entire crop was lost. quick to connect events he declared that the meteorite had poisoned the soil, and thanked heaven that most of the other crops were in the upland lot along the road.

''people vowed that the snow melted faster around nahum's, ... and had noticed the skunk-cabbages coming up through the mud by the woods across the road. never were things of such size seen before, and they held strange colours that could not be put into any words ... the bad fruit of the fall before was freely mentioned, and it went from mouth to mouth that there was poison in nahum's ground. of course it was the meteorite; ...

''the trees budded prematurely around nahum's, and at night they swayed ominously in the wind. ... when the early saxifrage came out it had another strange colour; not quite like that of the skunk-cabbage, but plainly related and equally unknown to any one who saw it. ...

''all the orchard trees blossomed forth in strange colours, and through the stony soil of the yard and adjacent pasturage there sprang up a bizarre growth which only a botanist could connect with the proper flora of the region.

''no sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased underlying primary tone without a place amoung thte known tints of earth. the dutchman's breeches became a thing of sinister menace and the bloodroots grew insolant in their chromatic perversion.

''in may the insects came, and nahum's place became a night-mare of buzzing and crawling. most of the creatures seemed not quite usual in their aspects and motions, and their nocturnal habits contradicted all former experiance. ...

''not long after this the changes in grass and leaves became apparent to the eye. all the verdure was going grey, and was developing a highly singular quality of brittleness ... and all the while the vegetation was turning grey and brittle. even the flowers whose hues had been so strange were greying now, and the fruit was coming out grey and dwarfed and tasteless.

''the asters and goldenrods bloomed grey and distorted, and the roses and zinneas and hollyhocks in the front yard were such blasphemous-looking things that nahum's oldest boy zenas cut them down. the strangely puffed insects died about that time, even the bees that had left their hives and taken to the woods.''

h.p.lovecraft, the colour out of space.