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     Email: shoshunov@mail.ru
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     ON READING LORD DUNSANY'S BOOK OF WONDER

     The hours of night unheeded fly,
     And in the grate the embers fade;
     Vast shadows one by one pass by
     In silent daemon cavalcade.

     But still the magic volume holds
     The raptur'd eye in realms apart,
     And fulgent sorcery enfolds
     The willing mind and eager heart.

     The lonely room no more is there -
     For to the sight in pomp appear
     Temples and cities pois'd in air
     And blazing glories - sphere on sphere.

           1920



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     Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering
     Flames of futility swirling below;
     Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering,
     Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.

     Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
     Cobwebs of cable to nameless things spun;
     Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
     Streams of live foetor that rots in the sun.

     Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
     Shrieking and ringing and crawling insane,
     Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
     Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.

     Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal.
     Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
     Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
     Yelling the Garden of Pluto's red rune.

     Tall towers and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling,
     Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber'd streets;
     Bleak Arkham bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling
     Joins with no voice as the thick horde retreats.

     Belfries that buckle against the moon totter,
     Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd,
     And living to answer the wind and the water,
     Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.

           1925



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     And the valleys are cold,
     And a midnight profound
     Blackly squats o'er the wold;
     But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of
     feastings unhallowed and old.

     There is death in the clouds,
     There is fear in the night,
     For the dead in their shrouds
     Hail the sun's turning flight.
     And chant wild in the woods as they dance
     round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

     To no gale of Earth's kind
     Sways the forest of oak,
     Where the thick boughs entwined
     By mad mistletoes choke,
     For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark,
     from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

     And mayst thou to such deeds
     Be an abbot and priest,
     Singing cannibal greeds
     At each devil-wrought feast,
     And to all the incredulous world
     shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

           1926



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     The thing, he said, would come in the night at three
     From the old churchyard on the hill below;
     But crouching by an oak fire's wholesome glow,
     I tried to tell myself it could not be.

     Surely, I mused, it was pleasantry
     Devised by one who did not truly know
     The Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago,
     That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free.

     He had not meant it - no - but still I lit
     Another lamp as starry Leo climbed
     Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed
     Three - and the firelight faded, bit by bit.

     Then at the door that cautious rattling came -
     And the mad truth devoured me like a flame!

           1929



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     They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles
     Of forest night had hid eternal things,
     They scaled the sky with towers and marble piles
     To make a city for their revellings.

     White and amazing to the lands around
     That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose;
     Crystal and ivory, sublimely crowned
     With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows.

     And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang,
     While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains;
     Never a voice of elder marvels sang,
     Nor any eye called up the hills and plains.

     Thus down the years, till on one purple night
     A drunken minstrel in his careless verse
     Spoke the vile words that should not see the light,
     And stirred the shadows of an ancient curse.

     Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield;
     So on the spot where that proud city stood,
     The shuddering dawn no single stone revealed,
     But fled the blackness of a primal wood.

           1929



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     In the Midnight heaven's burning
     Through the ethereal deeps afar
     Once I watch'd with restless yearning
     An alluring aureate star;
     Ev'ry eve aloft returning
     Gleaming nigh the Arctic Car.

     Mystic waves of beauty blended
     With the gorgeous golden rays
     Phantasies of bliss descended
     In a myrrh'd Elysian haze.
     In the lyre-born chords extended
     Harmonies of Lydian lays.

     And (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,
     Where the free and blessed dwell,
     And each moment bears a treasure,
     Freighted with the lotos-spell,
     And there floats a liquid measure
     From the lute of Israfel.

     There (I told myself) were shining
     Worlds of happiness unknown,
     Peace and Innocence entwining
     By the Crowned Virtue's throne;
     Men of light, their thoughts refining
     Purer, fairer, than my own.

     Thus I mus'd when o'er the vision
     Crept a red delirious change;
     Hope dissolving to derision,
     Beauty to distortion strange;
     Hymnic chords in weird collision,
     Spectral sights in endless range....

     Crimson burn'd the star of madness
     As behind the beams I peer'd;
     All was woe that seem'd but gladness
     Ere my gaze with Truth was sear'd;
     Cacodaemons, mir'd with madness,
     Through the fever'd flick'ring leer'd....

     Now I know the fiendish fable
     The the golden glitter bore;
     Now I shun the spangled sable
     That I watch'd and lov'd before;
     But the horror, set and stable,
     Haunts my soul forevermore!

      

        
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     Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
     Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
     Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
     Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
     Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
     And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
     Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

     Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
     Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
     No common glance discerns him, though his song
     Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
     Only the few who sorcery's secret know,
     Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.





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     O give me the life of the Village,
     Uninhibited, free, and sweet.
     The place where the arts all flourish,
     Grove Court and Christopher Street.

     I am sick of the old conventions,
     And critics who will not praise,
     So sing ho for the open spaces,
     And aesthetes with kindly ways.

     Here every bard is a genius,
     And artists are Raphaels,
     And above the roofs of Patchin Place
     The Muse of Talent dwells.



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     Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,
     Six and twenty thousand years
     Have revolv'd, and I return
     To the spot where now I burn.
     Other stars anon shall rise
     To the axis of the skies;
     Stars that soothe and stars that bless
     With a sweet forgetfulness:
     Only when my round is o'er
     Shall the past disturb thy door.



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Last-modified: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:27:06 GMT
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