Fungi from Yuggoth

by H. P. Lovecraft

FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH

 

by

 

HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT

 

FAPA
June 1943

Bill Evans

FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH

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H. P. Lovecraft

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I. THE BOOK

The place was dark and dusty and half-lostIn 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 showed the books, in piles like twisted trees,Rotting from floor to roof—congeriesOf crumbling elder lore at little cost.

I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heapTook up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,Trembling at curious words that seemed to keepSome secret, montrous if one only knew,Then, looking for some seller old in craft,I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.

II. PURSUIT

I held the book beneath my coat, at painsTo hide the thing from sight in such a place;Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanesWith often-turning head and nervous pace.Dull furtive windows in old tottering brickPeered at me oddly as I hastened by,And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sickFor a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.

No one had seen me take the thing—but stillA blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,And I could guess what nighted words of illLurked in that volume I had coveted.The way grew strange—the walls alike and madding—And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.

III. THE KEY

I do not know what windings in the wasteOf those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,But on my porch I trembled, white with hasteTo get inside and bolt the heavy door.I had the book that told the hidden wayAcross the void and through the space-hung screensThat hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,And keep lost aeons to their own desmesnes.

At last the key was mine to those vague visionsOf sunset spires and twilight woods that broodDim 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.

IV. RECOGNITION

The day had come again, when as a childI saw—just once—that hollow of old oaks, Grey with a ground-mist that enfolds and chokes The slinking shapes which madness has defiled. It was the same—and herbage rank and wildClings round en altar whose carved sign invokes That Nameless One to whom a thousand smokes Rose, aeons gone, from unclean towers up-piled.

I saw the body spread on that dank stone,And knew those things which feasted were not men;I knew this strange grey world was not my own,But Yuggoth, past the starry voids—and then The body shrieked at me with a dead cry,And all too late, I knew that it was I.

V. HOMECOMING

The daemon said that he would take me homeTo the pale shadowy land I half recalled As a high place of stair and terrace, walledWith marble balustrades that sky-winds comb, While miles below a maze of dome on domeAnd tower on tower beside a sea lies sprawled.Once more, he told me, I would stand enthralled On those old heights, and hear the far-off foam.

All this he promised, and through sunset's gateHe swept me, past the lapping lakes of flame,And red-gold thrones of gods without a nameWho shriek in fear at some impending fate.Then a black gulf with sea-sounds in the night."Here was your home," he mocked, "when you had sight!"

VI. THE LAMP

We found the lamp inside those hollow cliffs Whose chisselled signs no priest in Thebes could read,And from whose caverns frightening hieroglyphsWarned every living creature of earth's breed.No more was there—just that one brazen bowlWith traces of a curious oil within;Fretted with some obscurely patterned scrollAnd symbols hinting vaguely of strange sin.

Little the fears of forty centuries meantTo us, as we bore off our slender spoil,And when we scanned it in our darkened tentWe struck a match to test the ancient oil.It blazed—Great God!—but the vast shapes we saw In that mad flash have seared our lives with awe.

VII. ZAMAN'S HILL

A great hill hung close over the old town,A precipice against the main street's end;Green, tall, and wooded, looking darkly downUpon the steeple at the highway's bend.Two hundred years the whispers had been heardAbout what happened on the man-shunned slope—Tales of an oddly mangled deer or bird,Or of lost boys whose kin had ceased to hope.

One day the mail-man found no village there,Nor were its folk or houses seen again;People came out from Aylesbury to stare—Yet they all told the mail-man it was plainThat he was mad for saying he had spiedThe great hill's gluttonous eyes and jaws stretched wide.

VIII. THE PORT

Ten miles from Arkham I had struck the trailThat rides the cliff-edge over Boynton Beach,And hoped that just at sunset I could reachThe crest that looks on Innsmouth in the vale.Far out at sea was a retreating sail,White as hard years of ancient winds could bleach;But evil with some portent beyond speech,So that I did not wave my hand or hail.

Sails out of Innsmouth! Echoing old renownOf long-dead times. But now a too-swift nightIs closing in, and I have reached the heightWhence I so often scan the distant town.The spires and roofs are there—but look! The gloomSinks on dark lanes, as lightless as the tomb!

IX. THE COURTYARD

It was the city I had known before;The ancient leprous town where mongrel throngsChant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongsIn crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at meFrom where they leaned, drunk and half animate,As edging through the filth I passed the gateTo the black courtyard where the man would be.

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursedThat ever I had come to such a den,When suddenly a score of windows burstInto wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead—And not a corpse had either hands or head.

X. THE PIGEON-FLYERS

They took me slumming, where gaunt walls of brickBulge outward with a viscous stored-up evil,And twisted faces, thronging foul and thick,Wick messages to alien god and devil.A million flares were blazing in the streets,And from flat roofs, a furtive few would flyBedraggled birds into the yawning sky,While hidden drums droned on with measured beats.

I knew those fires were brewing monstrous things,And that those birds had been Outside—I guessed to what dark planet's crypts they plied,And what they brought from Thog beneath their wings.The others laughed—till struck too mute to speakBy what they glimpsed in one bird's evil beak.

XI. THE WELL

Farmer Seth Atwood was past eighty whenHe tried to sink that deep well by his door,With only Eb to help him bore and bore.We laughed, and hoped he'd soon be sane again.And yet, instead, young Eb went crazy too,So that they shipped him up to the county farm.Seth bricked the well up as tight as glue—Then hacked an artery in his gnarled left arm.

After the funeral we felt bound to getOut to that well and rip the bricks away.But all we saw were iron hand-holds setDown a black hole deeper than we could say.And yet we put the bricks back—for we foundThe hole too deep for any line to sound.

XII. THE HOWLER

They told me not to take the Briggs' Hill pathThat used to be the highroad through to Zoar,For Goody Watkins, hanged in seventeen-four,Had left a certain monstrous aftermath.Yet when I disobeyed, and had in viewThe vine-hung cottage by the great rock slope,I could not think of elms or hempen rope,But wondered why the house still seemed so new.

Stopping a while to watch the fading day,I heard faint howls, as from a room upstairs,When through the ivied panes one sunset rayStruck in, and caught the howler unawares.I glimpsed—and ran in frenzy from the place,And from a four-pawed thing with human face.

XIII. HESPERIA

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spiresAnd chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,Opens great gates to some forgotten yearOf elder splendours 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 clearToward 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 courseDown the vast void in starlit streams of hours.Dreams bring us close—but ancient lore repeatsThat human tread has never soiled these streets.

XIV. STAR-WINDS

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind poursDown hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,But showing 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 knowWhat fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scentsAnd tints of flowers fill Nithon's continents,Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.Yet for each dream these winds to me convey,A dozen more of ours they sweep away.

XV. ANTARKTOS

Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerlyOf the black cone amid the polar waste;Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,And only pale auroras and faint sunsGlow on that pitted rock, whose primal sourcesAre guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonderWhat tricky mound of Nature's build they spied;But the bird told of vaster parts, that underThe mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and hide.God help the dreamer whose mad visions showThose dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!

XVI. THE WINDOW

The house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,Of which no one could ever half keep track,And in a small room somewhat near the backWas an odd window sealed with ancient stone.There, in a dream-plagued childhood, quite aloneI used to go, where night reigned vague and black;Parting the cobwebs with a curious lackOf fear, and with a wonder each time grown.

One later day I brought the masons thereTo find what view my dim forebears had shunned,But as they pierced the stone, a rush of airBurst from the alien voids that yawned beyond.They fled—but I peered through and found unrolledAll the wild worlds of which my dreams had told.

XVII. A MEMORY

There were great steppes, and rocky table-landsStretching half limitless in starlit night,With alien campfires shedding feeble lightOn beasts with tinkling bells, in shaggy bands.Far to the south the plain sloped low and wideTo a dark zigzag line of wall that layLike a huge python of some primal dayWhich endless time had chilled and petrified.

I shivered oddly in the cold, thin air,And wondered where I was and how I came;When a cloaked form against a campfire's glareRose and approached, and called me by my name.Staring at that dead face beneath the hood,I ceased to hope—because I understood.

XVIII. THE GARDENS OF YIN

Beyond that wall, whose ancient masonryReached almost to the sky in moss-thick towers,There would be terraced gardens, rich with flowers,And flutter of bird and butterfly and bee.There would be walks, and bridges arching overWarm lotus-pools reflecting temple eaves,And cherry-trees with delicate boughs and leavesAgainst a pink sky where the herons hover.

All would be there, for had not old dreams flungOpen the gate to that stone-lanterned mazeWhere drowsy streams spin out their winding ways,Trailed by green vines from bending branches hung?I hurried—but when the wall rose, grim and great,I found there was no longer any gate.

XIX. THE BELLS

Year after year I heard that faint, far ringingOf deep-toned bells on the black midnight wind;Peals from no steeples I could ever find,But strange, as if across some great void winging.I searched my dreams and memories for a clue,And thought of all the chimes my visions carried;Of quiet Innsmouth, where the white gulls tarriedAround an ancient spire that once I knew.

Always perplexed I heard those far notes falling,Till one March night the bleak rain splashing coldBeckoned me back through gateways of recallingTo elder towers where the mad clappers tolled.They tolled—but from the sunless tides that pourThrough sunken valleys on the sea's dead floor.

XX. NIGHT-GAUNTS

Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,But every night I see the rubbery things;Black, horned, and slender, with membranous wings,And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.They come in legions on the north wind's swell,With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,Snatching me off on monstrous voyagingsTo grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare's well.

Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,Heedless of all the cries I try to make,And down the nether pits to that foul lakeWhere the puffed shaggoths splash in doubtful sleep.But oh! If they would only make some sound,Or wear a face where faces should be found!

XXI. NYARLATHOTEP

And at the last from inner Egypt cameThe strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;Silent and lean and cryptically proud,And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;While through the nations spread the awestruck wordThat wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.

Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolledDown on the quaking citadels of man.Then, crushing what he chanced in play,The idiot Chaos blew Earth's dust away.

XXII. AZATHOTH

Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,But only Chaos, without form or place.Here the vast Lord of All in darkness mutteredThings he had dreamed but could not understand,While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and flutteredIn idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.

They danced insanely to the high thin whiningOf a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combiningGives each frail cosmos its eternal law."I am His Messenger," the daemon said,As in contempt he struck his Master's head.

XXIII. 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 quiversWistfully just before a winter's night.

Great moors led off to sedgy shores unpeopled,Where vast birds wheeled, while on a windswept hillThere was a village, ancient and white-steepled,With evening chimes for which I listen still.I do not know what land it is—or dareAsk when or why I was, or will be there.

XXIV. THE CANAL

Somewhere in dream there is an evil placeWhere tall, deserted buildings crowd alongA deep, black, narrow channel; reeking strongOf frightful things where oily currents race.Lanes with old walls half-meeting overheadWind off to streets one may or may not know,And feeble moonlight sheds a spectral glowOver long rows of windows, dark and dead.

There are no footfalls, and the one soft soundIs of the oily water as it glidesUnder stone bridges, and along the sidesOf its deep flume, to some vague ocean bound.None lives to tell when that stream washed awayIts dream-lost region from the world of day.

XXV. ST. TOAD'S

"Beware St. Toad's cracked chimes!" I heard him screamAs I plunged into those mad lanes that windIn labyrinths obscure and undefinedSouth of the river where old centuries dream.He was a furtive figure, bent and ragged,And in a flash had staggered out of sight,So still I burrowed onward in the nightToward where more roof-lines rose, malign and jagged.

No guide-book told of what was lurking here—But now I heard another old man shriek;"Beware St. Toad's cracked chimes!" And growing weak,I paused; when a third greybeard croaked in fear,"Beware St. Toad's cracked chimes!" Aghast, I fled—Till suddenly that vast spire loomed ahead.

XXVI. THE FAMILIARS

John Whately lived about a mile from town,Up where the hills begin to huddle thick;We never thought his wits were very quick,Seeing the way he let his farm run down.He used to waste his time on some queer booksHe'd found around the attic of his place,Till funny lines got creased into his face,And folks all said they didn't like his looks.

When he began those night-howls we declaredHe'd better be locked up away from harm,So three men from the Aylesbury town farmWent for him—but came back alone and scared.They'd found him talking to two crouching thingsThat at their step flew off on great black wings.

XXVII. THE ELDER PHAROS

From Leng, where rocky peaks climb bleak and bareUnder cold stars obscure to human sight,There shoots at dusk a single beam of lightWhose far blue rays make shepherds whine in prayer.They say (though none has been there) that it comesOut of a pharos in a tower of stone,Where the last Elder One lives on alone,Talking to Chaos with the beat of drums.

The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken maskOf yellow, whose queer folds appear to hideA face not of this earth, though none dares askJust what those features are, which bulge inside.Many, in man's first youth, sought out that glow,But what they found, no one will ever know.

XXVIII. EXPECTANCY

I cannot tell why some things hold for meA sense of unplumbed marvels to befall,Or of a rift in the horizon's wallOpening to worlds where only gods can be.There is a breathless, vague expectancy,As of vast 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.

XXIX. NOSTALGIA

Once every year, in autumn's wistful glow,The birds fly out over an ocean waste,Calling and chattering in a joyous hasteTo reach some land their inner memories know.Great terraced gardens where bright blossoms blow,And lines of mangoes luscious to the taste,And temple groves with branches interlacedOver cool paths—all these their vague dreams show.

They search the sea for marks of their old shore—For the tall city, white and turreted—But only empty waters stretch ahead,So that at last they turn away once more.Yet sunken deep where alien polyps throng,The old towers miss their lost, remembered song.

XXX. BACKGROUND

I never can be tied to raw, new things,For I first saw the light in an old town,Where from my window huddled roofs sloped downTo a quaint harbor rich with visionings.Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beamsFlooded old fanlights and small window panes,And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vines—These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.

Such treasures, left from times of cautious leaven,Cannot but loose the hold of flimsier wraithsThat flit with shifting ways and muddled faithsAcross the changeless walls of earth and heaven.They cut the moment's thongs, and leave me freeTo stand alone before eternity.

XXXI. THE DWELLER

It had been old when Babylon was new;None knows how long it slept beneath the ground,Where in the end our questing shovels foundIts granite blocks, and brought it back to view.There were vast pavements and foundation walls,And crumbling slabs and statues, carved to showFantastic beings of some long agoPast anything the world of man recalls.

And then we saw those stone steps leading downThrough a choked gate of graven dolomiteTo some black haven of eternal nightWhere elder signs and primal secrets frown.We cleared a path—but raced in mad retreatWhen from below we heard those clumping feet.

XXXII. ALIENATION

His solid flesh had never been away,For each dawn found him in his usual place,But every night his spirit loved to raceThrough gulfs and worlds remote from common day.He had seen Yaddith, yet retained his mind,And come back safely from the Ghooric zone,When one still night across curved space was thrownThat beckoning piping from the voids beyond.

He waked that morning as an older man,And nothing since has looked the same to him.Objects around float nebulous and dim—False, phantom trifles of some vaster plan.His folk and friends are now an alien throngTo which he struggles vainly to belong.

XXXIII. HARBOR WHISTLES

Over old roofs and past decaying spiresThe harbor whistles chant all through the night;And fabulous oceans, ranged in motley choirs,Each to the other alien and unknown;Yet all, by some obscurely focussed forceFrom brooding gulfs beyond the Zodiac's course,Fused into one mysterious cosmic drone.

Through shadowy dreams they send a marching lineOf still more shadowy shapes and hints and views;Echoes from outer voids, and subtle cluesTo things which they themselves cannot define.And always in that chorus, faintly blent,We catch some notes no earth-ship ever sent.