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NEMESIS.TXT
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1996-02-25
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3KB
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80 lines
NEMESIS - A poem by H.P. Lovecraft
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 vapourous 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 many-forked lightning is rending
That resound with hysterical cries;
With moans of invisible daemons that out
of the geen waters rise.
I have plunged like a dear 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-riddled mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the frog-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 grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen
intently for sound.
I have hauntged 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 only I, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on
the far Arctic isle.
Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heavan can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of
unkmerciful 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.