FRAGMENT

With the red bewitchment of the moon canines collect

And feast and howl o'er carrion and orts and bones

In green and putrid grots that echo shrill sea-moans;

And huge and hoary plantigrades on crags most high,

Hearing the maddened carnal ravings of the hounds,

Huddle together on the topmost frozen mounds

To hurl immense boulders on them until all die.

THE ELDER THING

Oh, have you seen the Elder Thing

That creeps upon the hill—

A fearsome Thing with lurid eyes

At night when all is still;

A horror wrought of withered moss

And foul primordial slime,

Wherein there fester monstrously

The evils of all time?

With phosphorescent glow like naught

That Nature might devise,

All the fell ancient lore of earth

Gleams hellish in its eyes.

As night by night this Elder Thing

Upon the hill doth creep,

Awakened by men's blasphemies

From out its age-long sleep.

By monolith and haunted fen

Down to the mandrake mere

It prowls to meet the sheeted dead

That squeak and gibber there;

And nameless things, not beasts nor men,

With bat-like creatures vie,

And loathsome reptiles writhe and hiss

Till daybreak pales the sky.

A thousand shapes the Things—

A thousand shapes or none—

All forms of Fear since Earth was born

It mirrors as its own;

It apes each rhythmic Elder Sign

As it doth onward creep,

Awakened by man's blasphemies

From out its age-long sleep.