Azathoth
by H. P. LovecraftAzathoth
Written June 1922
Published 1938 in Leaves, Vol. 2: p. 107.
When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey
cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none
might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped
the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets asang no more of twisted phantoms
seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass,
and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on
a quest into spaces whither the worlds dreams had fled.
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking
world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he
dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all
day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window
opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows
stared in dull dispair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows,
except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that
passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who
dreams and reads much, the dweller in that rom used night after night to lean
out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world
and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by
name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight;
till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common
eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted
skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of
his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of
gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy
perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that
the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and
sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied aroud the dreamer
and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the
lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calanders the tides of far
spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly
left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus
blossums and starred by red camalates...
Document modified: 02/18/2000 13:59:48
Januszek66