My soul has the arms of an octopus To cuddle the whole world in; O’er the cosmic sea, with emotion plus, I float on a fluttery fin. For Buddha has bidden my bosom burst The collar that cramps us so— And I sprinkle all space with the love that erst Was lavish’d on Lima, O. - H. P. Lovecraft, "Unity"
By the god Yululun, Keeper of the Tombs, I deem it an ill thing to disturb the peaceful dead. And truly it is not well for men to enter Chaon Gacca, where Death has made his capital, and has gathered all the ghouls to do him homage.
I have just had some poems submitted to me for criticism. One of them begins: "My soul has the arms of an octopus"...Luckily for me, the poems are all brief.
We are the damned--the strain and moil That Death has washed from earthly time; Drawn down by tides of Hell, we boil Like toads within a torrid slime.
A ghoul there was in the days of old, And he drank the wine-dark blood Without a goblet, with never a flagon, Fresh from the deep throat-veins of the dead.
"What hellishness is this?" inquired the Master. "These men are but newly dead--and already the crabs rend them. Such creatures are wont to wait for the softening of decomposition. And look--they do not even devour the morsels they have torn, but bear them away."
Eibon had finally remembered the outlandish name for which he was groping. "Hziulquoigmnzhah," he sought to articulate.
I haven't gone to any movies lately. I agree with you that The Invisible Man was excellent.
Sorceress and sorcerer, Risen from the sepulcher, From the deep, unhallowed ground, We have found and we have bound Each the other, as before, With the fatal spells of yore, With Sabbatic sign, and word That Thessalian moons have heard.
Sorcerer and sorceress, Hold we still our heathenness— Loving without sin or shame— As in years of stake and flame. Share we now the witches' madness, Wake the Hecatean gladness, Call the demon named Delight From his lair of burning night.
Love that was, and love to be, Dwell within this wizardry: Lay your arm my head beneath As upon some nighted heath Where we slumbered all alone When the Sabbat's rout was flown; Let me drink your dulcet breath As in evenings after death.
Witch belovèd from of old, When upon Atlantis rolled All the dire and wrathful deep, You had kissed mine eyes asleep. On my lids shall fall your lips In the final sun's eclipse; And your hand shall take my hand In the last and utmost land.
Bloated incubi swam toward him on the air, levitating themselves pronely, quivering like obscene jellies, and lolling their fulsome vermilion tongues from taurine mouths.
Hzioulquoigmnzhah, uncle of Tsathoggua, and Ghizghuth, Tsathoggua's father, were the male progeny of Cxaxukluth, the androgynous spawn of Azathoth. Thus you will note a trend toward biological complexity.
"Good Lord! What is all that racket?" I cried. "The rats! I tell you it is only the rats!"
Silently the three came to the portals of the chamber, where entrance was barred only by a black arras wrought with the signs of night in silver, and bordered with a repetition of the fives names of the archfiend Thasaidon in scarlet thread.
CAS on Robert E. Howard I thought the last issue of W.T. rather punk, apart from the verses and one or two fine passages in Howard's tale. I couldn't stomach this last as a whole that bloody battle stuff is so stale that it gives me what Sterling called "the Molossian pip." [REH, BOTD in 1906.]
One last snippet of CAS on Poe in honor of Poe’s birthday: It is damnable to reflect that America has either killed her finest artists or has driven them into exile. Poe certainly died from hardship rather than drink…
CAS on HPL and Poe: "The Outsider" is a masterpiece of shadowy cobweb horror, with illimitable suggestive values and overtones. Honestly, I think it more successful than two-thirds of Poe! [Illustration by Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu (1902--1988), her third and last for Weird Tales]
Yet more CAS on Poe: My real education began with the reading of Robinson Crusoe (unabridged), Gulliver's Travels, the fairy tales of Andersen and the Countless D'Aulnoy, the Arabian Nights and (at the age of 13) Poe's Poems.
More CAS on Poe: In much of Poe's best work, the atmospheric elements are so subtly blended, unified and pervasive as to make analysis rather difficult. Something beyond and above the mere words and images seems to well from the entire fabric of the work, like the "pestilent and mystic vapor"…
CAS thoughts on Poe: Unique, was the thrill with which I discovered for myself the poems of Poe in a grammar-school library; and, despite the objurgations of the librarian, who considered Poe "unwholesome," carried the priceless volume home to revel for enchanted days in its undreamt-of melodies.
The Poet in A Barroom Faces of the four seasons Throng the bar: One peers from a time-lost star. (Likely the actual Auburn barroom pictured below - Happy 133rd Birthday, CAS)
My lips are moist, and I know the art of losing in a deep bed the antiquated conscience.
But, ah, it was a thousand years ago I took the lovely lamia for bride... And nevermore shall they that meet me know It is a thousand years since I have died.
Sitting for I knew not how long on its bleak basaltic shores, where grew but a few fleshly red orchids, bent above the waters like open and thirsty mouths, I would peer with countless fantastic conjectures and shadowy imaginings, into the alluring mystery of its unknown and inexplorable gulf.
I write the poems down Line by line from old anthologies Printed on the air and ether, Shelved amid the leaves of trees, Between the stars, or under stones And mouldered bones.
In their lidless implacable eyes of staring stone, is the petrified despair of those who have gazed too long on the infinite.
These beings, known as the Ispazars … had become formidable sorcerers and had developed an intellection beyond that of their kind, together with many esoteric faculties. Preserving the cold and evilly cryptic nature of reptiles, they had made themselves the masters of an abhuman science.
Ancient and imperial wines were poured for them in moonstone cups by the fleshless hands of their servitors; and they drank and feasted and revelled in fantasmagoric pomp, deferring till the morrow the resurrectiom of those who lay dead in Yethlyreom.