The Nameless City Searching the sands – the nameless city Whispers my name under the cursed lost moon Farther I go to claim discovery Arabi laughs at my eventual fate As for the sheiks who call this desert home they refuse and shun its crumbling walls Many have bade me to retreat its sinister secrets none are meant to see Stories of old told of the city poet Alhazred claimed invaded his dreams Picked up a pen that fateful morning Set to papyrus words that all should beware That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die Out of the distant ghastly stillness shapes of the city formed the shadowy ruins As it was night I fixed my camel rested till dawn before continuing on Hearing a deep clangorous bell sound fiery disc as Memnon hails the Nile I with my tools of excavation started exploring as no man before Never a carving or inscription that I could find to tell me who walked these halls Memories played of the mad Arab hunting my thoughts and deeply steering my fear That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die Eight hours I dug and removed rock turn to the left then I saw there Dark apertures leading into temples of stone where they worshiped I lit my torch and I crawled through then I beheld 3 foot ceilings Not meant for humans to be here primitive altars and pillars Night now approached but my fevered curiosity overtook fear Down, down I went past the painted murals of their race and their history Finally my torch showed a doorway lead to a steep dropping staircase Starting descent as the ceiling sunk ever lower and lower Cut in the walls wooden tombs held faintly I saw through their glass case Creatures as such I had not seen half human abominations Standing their vigil for all time thousands of eyes directed me Just then my torch had extinguished now dark, alone with the corpses I heard a shuffle and a scraping all ‘round my head just as the stairway door slammed Trapped in the dark and ancient city at first was silence then some voices I heard Louder they rang until a ghastly cursing and snarling in a language unknown Waiting for death embracing madness words of Alhazred I’m compelled to repeat That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die

Festival There is snow on the ground, And the valleys are cold, And a midnight profound Blackly squats o'er the world; 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 dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk. And may 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. HP Lovecraft 1925 (with minor edits)

The Hound In my ears there sounds the nightmare baying of the hound It is not a dream or madness this I cannot doubt Heaven/ forgive/ our sin/ and this/ dark fate May pass/ if I/ return/ the cursed amulet Bored with current intellectual systems of belief We sought out the decadent and diabolic scenes Hideous/ extremes/ human/ outrage/ abhorred Shocking/ decay/ frightful/ we chose/ grave robbing We began collecting trophies to adorn our dark museum And excite our jaded senses shelves a universe of horror Skulls of aged Kings and daemon carvings of basalt and onyx Statues – paintings - fiendish drawings from the hidden vault of Goya Nauseous instruments of music dissonant and ghastly sounding Tomb-loot of perversity and madness made our prized collection With St. John my partner leading we were feverish and sated When a perfect exhumation yielded a novel treasure We were more than common ghouls – our quest for novelty unending Dark kaleidoscopic dances, death portrayed in red precision Blasphemous, unthinkable the items we displayed so proudly Of the work we saw ourselves as pioneers of charnal art Then one day St. John declared a Holland grave our goal Laying there 500 years the greatest ghoul all told We arrived with spades and candles Churchyard in full moon Breaking through the earth and rotting wood too soon Then I saw a canine featured amulet of Jade This became the treasure for the journey we had made As I grabbed it we could hear a distant baying hound But we’d come too far to be dissuaded by mere sound I beheld a shadowed gibbous shine of charnel moon Quickly we re-covered and reburied that old tomb As we ran to leave the churchyard I looked back and saw Clouds of bats descending to the grave that we had robbed Studying the amulet I realized its source In the Necronomicon (a pictograph of course) The corpse eating cult of Leng would blindly worship it Next day we secured a passage on a freighting ship Standing on that deck in wind Thought I heard that Howl again Feeling haunted by a voice Shook it off … I’ve no choice Back in England safe and sound We dismissed thoughts of the hound Amulet now on our wall Feeling hunted after all Constant scented candles burned Troubling facts on research learned If Alhazred’s book have voice We had made an awful choice Terror struck one night St. John attacked while walking home Torn to ribbons by a shadow left for dead alone I ran to his side and asked what happened - this he said Holland you must go replace that damned amulet Then my ear detected a faint baying of a hound Could I still escape my fate returning to that ground? I returned to Holland to plead mercy from the ghoul Then some thieves descended stole the amulet, my doom Still I went - dug up the grave -to beg the corpse my life No longer a pile of bones he now seemed half alive Always where I go there is a baying close behind In despair - my only friend has claimed my frail mind Madness rides the star wind… Claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses… Dripping death astride a Bacchanale of bats From night black ruins of buried temples of Belial Now, as the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows loud and louder… In the stealthy whirring and flapping of those cursed web-wings Circles closer and closer I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge From the unnamed and unnameable… I see the Hound!

Nemesis Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, I have lived o'er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight; And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright. I have whirled with the earth at the dawning, When the sky was a vaporous flame; I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name. I had drifted o'er seas without ending, Under sinister grey-clouded skies, That the many-forked lightning is rending, That resound with hysterical cries; With the moans of invisible daemons, that out of the green waters rise. I have plunged like a deer through the arches Of the hoary primordial grove, Where the oaks feel the presence that marches, And stalks on where no spirit dares rove, And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers through dead branches above. I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains That rise barren and bleak from the plain, I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains That ooze down to the marsh and the main; And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things, I care not to gaze on again. I have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace, I have trod its untenanted hall, Where the moon rising up from the valleys Shows the tapestried things on the wall; Strange figures discordantly woven, that I cannot endure to recall. I have peered from the casements in wonder At the mouldering meadows around, At the many-roofed village laid under The curse of a lost grave-girdled ground; And from rows of white urn-carven marble, I listen intently for sound. I have haunted the tombs of the ages, I have flown on the pinions of fear, Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages; Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear: And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer. I was old when the pharaohs first mounted The jewel-decked throne by the Nile; I was old in those epochs uncounted When I, and I only, was the vile; And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle. Oh, great then was the sin of my spirit, And great now is the reach of its doom; Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it, Nor can respite be found in the tomb: Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom. Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, I have lived o'er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight; And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright. HP Lovecraft 1918 (with minor edits)