Summary: Halloween Special:<br> Cool weird horror poetry.<br> ⁓The Voice before the Void<br> “The Nightmare Lake”<br> H.P. Lovecraft<br> There is a lake in distant Zan,<br> Beyond the wonted haunts of man,<br> Where broods alone in a hideous state<br> A spirit dead and desolate;<br> A spirit ancient and unholy,<br> Heavy with fearsome melancholy,<br> Which from the waters dull and dense<br> Draws vapors cursed with pestilence.<br> Around the banks, a mire of clay,<br> Sprawl things offensive in decay,<br> And curious birds that reach that shore<br> Are seen by mortals nevermore.<br> Here shines by day the searing sun<br> On glassy wastes beheld by none,<br> And here by night pale moonbeams flow<br> Into the deeps that yawn below.<br> In nightmares only is it told<br> What scenes beneath those beams unfold;<br> What scenes, too old for human sight,<br> Lie sunken there in endless night;<br> For in those depths there only pace<br> The shadows of a voiceless race.<br> One midnight, redolent of ill,<br> I saw that lake, asleep and still;<br> While in the lurid sky there rode<br> A gibbous moon that glow’d and glow’d.<br> I saw the stretching marshy shore,<br> And the foul things those marshes bore:<br> Lizards and snakes convuls’d and dying;<br> Ravens and vampires putrefying;<br> All these, and hov’ring o’er the dead,<br> Narcophagi that on them fed.<br> And as the dreadful moon climb’d high,<br> Fright’ning the stars from out the sky,<br> I saw the lake’s dull water glow<br> Till sunken things appear’d below.<br> There shone unnumber’d fathoms down,<br> The tow’rs of a forgotten town;<br> The tarnish’d domes and mossy walls;<br> Weed-tangled spires and empty halls;<br> Deserted fanes and vaults of dread,<br> And streets of gold uncoveted.<br> These I beheld, and saw beside<br> A horde of shapeless shadows glide;<br> A noxious horde which to my glance<br> Seem’d moving in a hideous dance<br> Round slimy sepulchres that lay<br> Beside a never-travell’d way.<br> Straight from those tombs a heaving rose<br> That vex’d the waters’ dull repose,<br> While lethal shades of upper space<br> Howl’d at the moon’s sardonic face.<br> Then sank the lake within its bed,<br> Suck’d down to caverns of the dead,<br> Till from the reeking, new-stript earth<br> Curl’d foetid fumes of noisome birth.<br> About the city, nigh uncover’d,<br> The monstrous dancing shadows hover’d,<br> When lo! there oped with sudden stir<br> The portal of each sepulchre!<br> No ear may learn, no tongue may tell<br> What nameless horror then befell.<br> I see that lake—that moon agrin—<br> That city and the things within—<br> Waking, I pray that on that shore<br> The nightmare lake may sink no more!<br>
