nor is it to be thought, (ran the text as armitage mentally translated it) that man is either the oldest or the last of earths masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. the old ones were, the old ones are, and the old ones shall be. not in the spaces we know, but between them.
they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. yog-sothoth knows the gate. yog-sothoth is the gate. yog-sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. past, present, future all are one in yog-sothoth. he knows where the old ones broke through of old, and where they shall break through again. he knows where they have trod earths fields and where they still tread them, and why know one can behold them as they tread.
by their smell can men sometimes know them near, but of their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those they have begotten on mankind; and of those there are many sorts, differing in likeness from mans truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is them.
they walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the words have been spoken and the rites howled through at their seasons. the wind gibbers with their voices, and the earth mutters with their consciousness. they bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites.
kadath in the cold waste hath known them, and what man knows kadath? the ice deserts of the south and the sunken isles of the ocean hold stones wherein their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? great Cthulhu is their cousin, yet can he spy them only dimly.
ial shrub-niggurath! as a foulness shall ye know them. their hand is at your throats, yet ye see them not; and their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. yog-sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet.
man rules now where they ruled once; they shall soon rule where man rules now. after summer is winter, and after winter summer. they wait patient and potent, for here shall they reign again.
h.p.lovecraft, the dunwich horror.
