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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.
