landscape piece

''and once i walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a little gate of bronze. many times i walked through that valley, and longer and longer would i pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. and always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein. ... and as i looked upon the little gate in the mighty wall, i felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return. so each night in sleep i strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. and i would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more lovely and radiant as well.''

h.p.lovecraft, ex oblivione.

knock on ibid's skull

[image from skulladay.]

''his remains, notwithstanding the troubled state of italy, were taken to ravenna for interment ... were exhumed and ridiculed by the lombard duke of spoleto, who took his skull to king autharis ... ibid's skull was proudly handed down from king to king of the lombard line ... the skull was seized by the tottering desiderius and carried in the train of the frankish conqueror ... charlemagne took ibid's skull to his capital at aix, ... william the conqueror, finding it in an abbey niche ... did reverence to its osseous antiquity; ...

reliquary of ibid.

'' it was captured by the private soldier read-'em-and-weep hopkins, who not long after traded it to rest-in-jehovah stubbs ... stubbs, upon sending forth his son zerubbabel to seek his fortune ... gave him st.ibid's ... skull as a talisman. upon landing in salem zerrubbabel ... having become addicted to gaming, lost the skull to one epenetus dexter, ... it was in the house of dexter, in the northern part of the town near the present intersection of north main and olney streets, ... but the austere head of ibid continued on its wanderings ...

talisman of ibid.

'' petrus van schaack, secured the distinguished cranium for the modest sum of two guilders, he having recognised its value from the half-effaced inscription carved in lombardic miniscules ... from van schaack, sad to say the relic was stolen in 1683 by a french trader, jean grenier ... fired with virtuous rage at the possession of this holy relic by a protestant, crushed van schaack's head one night with an axe and escaped to the north with his booty; soon however being robbed and slain by the half-breed voyageur michael savard, who took the skull ... to add to a collection of similar but more recent material ...

holy relic of ibid.

'' his half-breed son pierre traded it among other things to some emissaries of the sacs and foxes, ... charles de langlade, founder of the trading post at green bay, ransomed it at the expense of many glass beads; later traded to jacques caboche, another settler, it was in 1850 lost in a game of chess or poker to a newcomer named hans zimmerman; ... where falling into the burrow of a prairie-dog, it passed beyond his power of discovery or recovery ...

alter of ibid.

'' so for generations did the skull ... lie hidden beneath the soil of a growing town ... at first worshipped with dark rites by the prairie-dogs, who saw in it a diety sent from the upper world, ... and at last one fateful night a titan thing occured. subtle nature, convulsed with a spiritual ectasy, ... laid low the lofty and heaved high the humble and behold! ... subterrene arcana hidden for years came at last to light. for there in the rifted roadway, lay bleached and tranquil in bland, saintly and consular pomp the dome like skull of ibid.''

h.p.lovecraft, ibid.

winter's soul

''ye winter gusts that round my casement blow and pile in drifts the palid demon snow; ye cruel frosts, that numb with poison breath a suff'ring world, and serve the will of death! grant me, ye gods , a dome of crystal glass, through whose clear surface sun and stars might blaze, ...

''here let me dwell, and in december sing midst balmy zephyrs of eternal spring! ... through mossy meads a limped stream might run, ... a floral train the rolling green might bear, ... unusual flow'rs the well plac'd urns might fill, ... here might the studious mind at ease expand, nor fear the woes that fret a wintery land. ...

''but see--alas--the pleasing picture fades--and icy field displaces the vernal shades! yet when indeed does life reward or please with truer things than visions such a these? our struggling years too little bliss could own were they confin'd to genuine joys alone! ... though changing seasons o'er the mead may roll, spring reigns perpetual in the smiling soul!''

h.p.lovecraft, a winters wish.

black cats

''between dogs and cats my degree of choice is so great that it would never occur to me to compare the two, i have no active dislike for dogs ... but for the cat i have entertained a particular respect and affection ever since the earliest days of my infancy ... naturally one's preference in the matter of cats and dogs depends wholly upon ones temperment and point of view. the dog would appear to me to be the favorite of superficial, sentimental, and emotional people ... this is not to say that the cheaper elements do not also reside in the average cat-lover's love of cats, but merely to point out that in ailurophily there exists a basis of true aestheticism which kynophily does not possess ...

''throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. do the same before a cat, and he would eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement ... the dog barks and begs and tumbles to amuse you when you crack the whip. ... the cat on the other hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused; making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in the humour. that is personality and individuality and self respect--the calm mastery of a being whose life is its own and not yours ...

''the cat is a realist, and no hypocrit. he takes what pleases him when he wants it, and makes no promises. he never leads you to expect more from him than he gives, and if you choose to be stupidly victorian enough to mistake his purrs and rubbings of self satisfaction for marks of transient affection toward you, that is no fault of his. he would not for a moment have you believe that he wants more of you than food and warmth and shelter and amusement--''

h.p.lovecraft, something about cats.

smithean couplet

he discerned in a dark recess the formless bulking of a couchant mass. and the mass stirred a little at his approach, and put forth with infinite slothfulness a huge and toad-shaped head. and the head opened its eyes very slightly, as if half awakened from slumber so that they were visible as two slits of oozing phospher in the black, browless face ...

he went forward till he could see the fine dark fur on the dormant body and sleepily porrected head ... there was a sluggish inclination of the toad-like head; and the eyes opened a little wider, and light flowed from them in viscous tricklings on the creased underlids.

clark ashton smith, the seven geases.

among the pleasures

text from alternate manuscript at eldritch dark.

''treasury of art, emporium of wealth, so expensive to live in that the saying ran "not everyone can go to corinth", its citadel poised so grandly on the craggy mountain above, the two blue gulfs spread below, it walls fortified with such extravagant strength--this superb city came crashing down in flames, and mummiu's soldiery hacked their way about streets, temples, rich villas, sepulchres, great warehouses stored with merchandise, galleries set with marble and bronze statues and bright paintings, smashing, looting, destroying and massacring, in philistine triumph and greed. they left behind them chaos, piled corpses, an almost razed city ...

''the dramatic contrast between the city of blackened ruins and broken stones and the magnificence that had been, stirred for a century the pity and the imagination of all who passed that way ... wrecked corinth thus lay derelict, lived in by a few, but uncleared and unbuilt, from 146 to 44 bc. then julius caesar who knew the importance of its position, set to work to rebuild it, clearing away the hundred years of ruins and building up a fine roman town. ...

''roman merchants and gentlemen came and grew rich in the once-more flourishing sea trade; they built their villas where those of rich corinthians had stood; digging about, they came on beautiful objects buried in debris; in their theatres they had gladitorial shows; they soon became licentious enough to qualify for the diatribes of st. paul; perhaps they absorbed it from the ancient site of libertinism; and such influences may be numbered among the pleasures of ruins.''

rose macaulay, pleasure of ruins.

the woods with a thousand young

''the substance of the record was quasi-ritualistic, and included one palpably human voice ... the recording phonograph and dictaphone had not worked uniformly well, and had of course been at great disadvantage because of the remote and muffled nature of the over heard ritual; so that the actual speech secured was very fragmentary, ... i will present it here in full as i remember it--and i am fairly confident that i know it correctly by heart, not only from reading the transcript, but from playing the record itself over and over again. it is not a thing which one might readily forget

''[indistinguishable sounds] [a cultivated male human voice] ... is the lord of the woods, even to ... and the gifts of the men of leng ... so from the wells of night to the gulfs of space, and from the gulfs of space to the wells of night. ever the praises of great cthulhu, of tsathoggua, and of him who is not to be named. ever their praises, and abundance to the black goat of the woods. ia! shub-niggurath! the goat with a thousand young! [a buzzing imitation of human speech] ia! shub-niggurath! the black goat of the woods with a thousand young

''such were the words for which i was to listen when i started the phonograph. it was with a trace of genuine dread and reluctance that i pressed the lever and heard the preliminary scratching of the sapphire point, and i was glad that the first faint fragmentary words were in a human voice ... and then i heard the other voice. to this hour i shudder retrospectively when i think of how it struck me, ... it swiftly followed the human voice in ritualistic response, but in my imagination it was a morbid echo winging its way across unimaginable abysses from unimaginable outer hells. it is more than two years now since i last ran off that blasphemous waxen cylinder; but at this moment, and at all other moments, i can still hear that feeble, fiendish buzzing as it reached me for the first time.

''ia! shub-niggurath! the black goat of the woods with a thousand young!''

h.p.lovecraft, the whisperer in darkness.