Poetry and the Gods by H.P. Lovecraft
and Anna Helen Crofts
A damp gloomy evening in April it was, just
after the close of the Great War, when Marcia found
herself alone with strange thoughts and wishes, unheard-of yearnings which
floated out of the spacious twentieth-century drawing room, up the deeps
of the air, and eastward to olive groves in distant Arcady which she had
seen only in her dreams. She had entered the room in abstraction, turned
off the glaring chandeliers, and now reclined on a soft divan by a solitary
lamp which shed over the reading table a green glow as soothing as moonlight
when it issued through the foliage about an antique shrine.
Attired simply, in a low-cut black evening dress, she appeared
outwardly a typical product of modern civilization; but tonight she felt
the immeasurable gulf that separated her soul from all her prosaic surroundings.
Was it because of the strange home in which she lived, that abode of coldness
where relations were always strained and the inmates scarcely more than
strangers? Was it that, or was it some greater and less explicable misplacement
in time and space, whereby she had been born too late, too early, or too
far away from the haunts of her spirit ever to harmonize with the unbeautiful
things of contemporary reality? To dispel the mood which was engulfing her
more and more deeply each moment, she took a magazine from the table and
searched for some healing bit of poetry. Poetry had always relieved her troubled
mind better than anything else, though many things in the poetry she had
seen detracted from the influence. Over parts of even the sublimest verses
hung a chill vapor of sterile ugliness and restraint, like dust on a window-pane
through which one views a magnificent sunset.
Listlessly turning the magazine's pages, as if searching for an elusive
treasure, she suddenly came upon something which dispelled her languor. An
observer could have read her thoughts and told that she had discovered some
image or dream which brought her nearer to her unattained goal than any image
or dream she had seen before. It was only a bit of vers libre, that pitiful
compromise of the poet who overleaps prose yet falls
short of the divine melody of numbers; but it had in it all the unstudied
music of a bard who lives and feels, who gropes ecstatically for unveiled
beauty. Devoid of regularity, it yet had the harmony of winged, spontaneous
words, a harmony missing from the formal, convention-bound verse she had
known. As she read on, her surroundings gradually faded, and soon there lay
about her only the mists of dream, the purple, star-strewn mists beyond time,
where only Gods and dreamers walk. Moon
over Japan, White butterfly moon!
Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream
To the sound of the cuckoo's call...
The white wings of moon butterflies
Flicker down the streets of the city,
Blushing into silence the useless wicks of sound-lanterns
in the hands of girls Moon over the tropics,
A white-curved bud
Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven...
The air is full of odours
And languorous warm sounds... A flute
drones its insect music to the night Below
the curving moon-petal of the heavens.
Moon over China, Weary moon on the river
of the sky, The stir of light in the willows
is like the flashing of a thousand silver minnows
Through dark shoals; The tiles on graves
and rotting temples flash like ripples,
The sky is flecked with clouds like the scales of a dragon.
Amid the mists of dream the reader cried to
the rhythmical stars, of her delight at the coming of a new age of song, a
rebirth of Pan. Half closing her eyes, she repeated words whose melody lay
hidden like crystals at the bottom of a stream before dawn, hidden but to
gleam effulgently at the birth of day.
Moon over Japan, White butterfly moon!
Moon over the tropics,
A white curved bud Opening
its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven.
The air is full of odours And languorous
warm sounds... Moon over China,
Weary moon on the river of the sky...
Out of the mists gleamed godlike
the torm ot a youth, in winged helmet and sandals, caduceus-bearing, and
of a beauty like to nothing on earth. Before the face of the sleeper he thrice
waved the rod which Apollo had given him in trade
for the nine-corded shell of melody, and upon her brow he placed a wreath
of myrtle and roses. Then, adoring, Hermes spoke:
"0 Nymph more fair than the golden-haired sisters of Cyene or the sky-inhabiting
Atlantides, beloved of Aphrodite and blessed of Pallas, thou hast indeed
discovered the secret of the Gods, which lieth in beauty and song. 0 Prophetess
more lovely than the Sybil of Cumae when Apollo first knew her, thou has
truly spoken of the new age, for even now on Maenalus, Pan sighs and stretches
in his sleep, wishful to wake and behold about him the little rose-crowned
fauns and the antique Satyrs. In thy yearning hast thou divined what no mortal,
saving only a few whom the world rejects, remembereth: that the Gods were
never dead, but only sleeping the sleep and dreaming the dreams of Gods in
lotos-filled Hesperian gardens beyond the golden sunset. And now draweth nigh
the time of their awakening, when coldness and ugliness shall perish, and
Zeus sit once more on Olympus. Already the sea about Paphos trembleth into
a foam which only ancient skies have looked on before, and at night on Helicon
the shepherds hear strange murmurings and half-remembered notes. Woods and
fields are tremulous at twilight with the shimmering of white saltant forms,
and immemorial Ocean yields up curious sights beneath thin moons. The Gods
are patient, and have slept long, but neither man nor giant shall defy the
Gods forever. In Tartarus the Titans writhe and beneath the fiery Aetna groan
the children of Uranus and Gaea. The day now dawns when man must answer for
centuries of denial, but in sleeping the Gods have grown kind and will not
hurl him to the gulf made for deniers of Gods. Instead will their vengeance
smite the darkness, fallacy and ugliness which have turned the mind of man;
and under the sway of bearded Saturnus shall mortals, once more sacrificing
unto him, dwell in beauty and delight. This night shalt thou know the favour
of the Gods, and behold on Par nassus those dreams
which the Gods have through ages sent to earth to show that they are not
dead. For poets are the dreams of Gods, and in each and every age someone
hath sung unknowingly the message and the promise from the lotosgardens beyond
the sunset." Then in his arms Hermes bore
the dreaming maiden through the skies. Gentle breezes from the tower of
Aiolas wafted them high above warm, scented seas, till suddenly they came
upon Zeus, holding court upon double-headed Parnassus, his golden throne
flanked by Apollo and the Muses on the right hand, and by ivy-wreathed Dionysus
and pleasure-flushed Bacchae on the left hand. So much of splendour Marcia
had never seen before, either awake or in dreams, but its radiance did her
no injury, as would have the radiance of lofty Olympus; for in this lesser
court the Father of Gods had tempered his glories for the sight of mortals.
Before the laurel-draped mouth of the Corycian cave sat in a row six noble
forms with the aspect of mortals, but the countenances of Gods. These the
dreamer recognized from images of them which she had beheld, and she knew
that they were none else than the divine Maeonides, the avernian Dante,
the more than mortal Shakespeare, the chaos-exploring Milton, the cosmic Goethe
and the musalan Keats. These were those messengers whom the Gods had sent
to tell men that Pan had passed not away, but only slept; for it is in poetry
that Gods speak to men. Then spake the Thunderer:
"0 Daughter--for, being one of my endless line, thou art indeed my daughter--behold
upon ivory thrones of honour the august messengers Gods have sent down that
in the words and writing of men there may be still some traces of divine
beauty. Other bards have men justly crowned with enduring laurels, but these
hath Apollo crowned, and these have I set in places apart, as mortals who
have spoken the language of the Gods. Long have we dreamed in lotosgardens
beyond the West, and spoken only through our dreams; but the time approaches
when our voices shall not be silent . It is a time
of awakening and change. Once more hath Phaeton ridden low, searing the
fields and drying the streams. In Gaul lone nymphs with disordered hair
weep beside fountains that are no more, and pine over rivers turned red with
the blood of mortals. Ares and his train have gone forth with the madness
of Gods and have returned Deimos and Phobos glutted with unnatural delight.
Tellus moons with grief, and the faces of men are as the faces of Erinyes,
even as when Astraea fled to the skies, and the waves of our bidding encompassed
all the land saving this high peak alone. Amidst this chaos, prepared to herald
his coming yet to conceal his arrival, even now toileth our latest born messenger,
in whose dreams are all the images which other messengers have dreamed before
him. He it is that we have chosen to blend into one glorious whole all the
beauty that the world hath known before, and to write words wherein shall
echo all the wisdom and the loveliness of the past. He it is who shall proclaim
our return and sing of the days to come when Fauns and Dryads shall haunt
their accustomed groves in beauty. Guided was our choice by those who now
sit before the Corycian grotto on thrones of ivory, and in whose songs thou
shalt hear notes of sublimity by which years hence thou shalt know the greater
messenger when he cometh. Attend their voices as one by one they sing to
thee here. Each note shall thou hear again in the poetry which is to come,
the poetry which shall bring peace and pleasure to thy soul, though search
for it through bleak years thou must. Attend with diligence, for each chord
that vibrates away into hiding shall appear again to thee after thou hast
returned to earth, as Alpheus, sinking his waters into the soul of Hellas,
appears as the crystal arethusa in remote Sicilia."
Then arose Homeros, the ancient among bards, who took his
lyre and chanted his hymn to Aphrodite. No word of Greek did Marcia know,
yet did the message not fall vainly upon her ears, for in the cryptic rhythm
was that which spake to all mortals and Gods, and needed
no interpreter. So too the songs of Dante
and Goethe, whose unknown words dave the ether with melodies easy to ready
and adore. But at last remembered accents resounded before the listener.
It was the Swan of Avon, once a God among men, and still a God among Gods:
Write, write, that from the bloody course of
war, My dearest master, your dear son,
may hie; Bless him at home in peace,
whilst I from far, His name with zealous
fervour sanctify. Accents still more familiar
arose as Milton, blind no more, declaimed immortal harmony:
Or let thy lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where
I might oft outwatch the Bear With thrice-great
Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato,
to unfold What worlds or what vast regions
hold The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshy nook.
* * * * * Sometime let
gorgeous tragedy In sceptered pall come
sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelop's
line, Or the tale of Troy divine.
Last of all came the young voice of Keats,
closest of all the messengers to the beauteous faun-folk:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter, therefore, yet sweep pipes, play on...
* * * * *
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st
"Beauty is truth -- truth beauty" -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
As the singer ceased, there came a sound in the wind blowing
from far Egypt, where at night Aurora mourns by the Nile for her slain Memnon.
To the feet of the Thunderer flew the rosy-fingered Goddess and, kneeling,
cried, "Master, it is time I unlocked the Gates of the East." And Phoebus,
handing his lyre to Calliope, his bride among the Muses, prepared to depart
for the jewelled and column-raised Palace of the Sun, where fretted the steeds
already harnessed to the golden car of Day. So Zeus descended from his caryen
throne and placed his hand upon the head of Marcia, saying:
"Daughter, the dawn is nigh, and it
is well that thou shouldst return before the awakening of mortals to thy home.
Weep not at the bleakness of thy life, for the shadow of false faiths will
soon be gone and the Gods shall once more walk among men. Search thou unceasingly
for our messenger, for in him wilt thou find peace and comfort. By his word
shall thy steps be guided to happiness, and in his dreams of beauty shall
thy spirit find that which it craveth." As Zeus ceased, the young Hermes
gently seized the maiden and bore her up toward the fading stars, up and
westward over unseen seas. * * *
Many years have passed since Marcia dreamt of
the Gods and of their Parnassus conclave. Tonight she sits in the same spacious
drawing-room, but she is not alone. Gone is the old spirit of unrest, for
beside her is one whose name is luminous with celebrity: the young poet of
poets at whose feet sits all the world. He is reading from a manuscript words
which none has ever heard before, but which when heard will bring to men
the dreams and the fancies they lost so many centuries ago, when Pan lay
down to doze in Arcady, and the great Gods withdrew to sleep in lotos-gardens
beyond the lands of the Hesperides. In the subtle cadences and hidden melodies
of the bard the spirit of the maiden had found rest at last, for there echo
the divinest notes of Thracian Orpheus, notes that moved the very rocks and
trees by Hebrus' banks. The singer ceases, and with eagerness asks a verdict,
yet what can Marcia say but that the strain is "fit for the Gods"?
And as she speaks there comes again a vision
of Parnassus and the far-off sound of a mighty voice saying, that by his
word shall thy steps be guided to happiness, and in his dreams of beauty
shall thy spirit find all that it craveth."
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