CoCP

Call of Cthulhu Poetry...

HALLOWE'EN IN A SUBURB

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampire fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset's gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind blows through the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past it's own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power
Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne,
And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and palin
That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
Sprung out of the tomb's black maw
To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the moon shall greet forlorn,
The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
Shall some day be with the rest,
And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let lemurs bark,
And the leprous sires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
Of horror and death are penned,
For thehounds of Time to rend.

- H. P. Lovecraft.

THE LAIR OF GREAT CTHULHU
Tune: Chattanooga Choo-Choo

Pardon me boy -
Is this the lair of Great Cthulha?
In the city of slime,
Where it is night all the time.

Bob Hope never went
Along the road to Great Cthulhu,
And Triple-A has no maps,
And all the Tcho-tchos lay traps.

You'll see an ancient sunken city where the angles
are wrong.
You'll see the fourth dimension if you're there
very long.
Come to the conventacle.
Bring along your pentacle;
Otherwise you'll br dragged off by a tentacle.

A mountain's in the middle, with a house on the peak;
A gnashin' and a thrashin' and a clackin' of beak.
Your soul you will be lackin'
When you see that mighty kraken.
Oo-oo! Great Cthulhu's starting to speak.

So come on board,
Along the road to Great Cthulhu.
Wen-di-gos and dholes
Will make Big Macs of our souls.

Under the sea,
Down in the ancient city of R'lyeh,
In the lair of Great Cthulhu,
They'll suck your souls away!

(Great Cthulhu, Great Cthulhu - Suck your soul! -
(Great Cthulhu, Great Cthulhu)
In the lair of Great Cthulhu,
They'll suck your soul away.

- Joan Carruth and Larry Press.

YULE HORROR

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
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 sick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes coke,
For these pow'rs of the dark,
from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

- H. P. Lovecraft; December, 1926

THE NIGHTMARE LAKE

There is a lake in distant Zan,
Beyind the wonted haunts of man,
Where broods alone in hideous state
A spirit dead and desolate;
A spirit ancient and unholy,
Heavy with fearsome melancholy,
Which from the waters dull and dense
Draws vapours curst with pestilence.
Around the banks, a mire of clay,
Sprawl things offensive in decay,
And curious birds that reach that shore
Are seen by mortals nevermore.
Here shines by day the searing sun
On glassy wastes beheld by none,
And here by night pale moonbeams flow
Into the deeps that yawn below.
In nightmares only is it told
What scenes beneath those beams unfold;
What scenes, too old for human sight,
Lie sunken there is endless night;
For in those depths there only pace
The shadows of a voiceless race.
One midnight, redolent of ill,
I saw that lake, asleep and still;
While in the lurid sky there rode
a gibbous moon that glowed and glowed.
I saw the stretching marshy shore,
And the foul things those marshes bore;
Lizards and snakes convulsed and dying;
Ravens and vampires putrefying;
All these, and hovering o'er the dead,
Necrophagi that on them fed.
And as the dreadful moon climbed high,
frightening the stars from out the sky,
I saw the lake's dull water glow
Till sunken things appeared below.
There shone, unnumbered fathoms down,
The towers of a forgotten town;
The tarnished domes and mossy walls;
Weed-tangled spires and empty halls;
Deserted fanes and vaults of dread,
And streets of gold uncoveted.
These I beheld, and saw beside
A horde of shapeless shadows glide;
A noxious horde which to my glance
Seemed moving in a hideous dance
Round slimy sepulchres, that lay
Besides a never-travelled way.
Straight from these tombs a heaving rose
That vexed the waters' dull repose,
While lethal shades of upper space
holwed at the moon's sardonic face.
Then sank the lake within its bed,
Sucked down to caverns of the dead,
Till from the reeking, new stript earth
Curled foetid fumes of noisome birth.
About the city, nigh uncovered,
The monstrous dancing shadows novered,
When lo! there opened with sudden stir
The portal of each sepulchre!
No ear mat learn; on tongue may tell
What nameless horror then befell.
I see that lake - that moon agrin -
That city and the thing within -
Walking, I pray that on that shore
The nightmare lake may sink no more!

- H. P. Lovercraft.