From: aldavi01@romulus.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis)
Subject: Stories of HPLovecraft
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 23:56:01 GMT
Organization: University of Louisville


This post contains these short stories by HPLovecraft:
	Ex Oblivione
	Memory
	What the Moon Brings
	Azathoth
	(excerpt from) Nyarlathotep

A friend transcribed these stories years ago.  (I removed his name from the
files, because I don't know if he wants his name attached to them.) There is no
rhyme nor pattern to the selection of the stories; they are only what I could
find.

*** Disclaimer: I have no idea if these are still in copyright.  If so, oops!,
  forget you ever saw them, mail me, I'll cancel the post.  They are only here
  for personal usage, so don't typeset them and start printing books, or the
  copyright police'll getchya and feed you to Cthulhu.

By the way, if *you* have any texts transcribed, by HPl or anyone else, please
mail them to me!

On with the stories...


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"Ex Oblivione" by H. P. Lovecraft


  When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to
drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall
ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge
of sleep.  In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in
life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.
  Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed
endlessly and languorously under strange stars.
  Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream
under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight, iridescent
arbours, and undying roses.
  And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and
ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a
little gate of bronze.
  Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause
in the spectral half-light where the giant tress squirmed and twisted
grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk,
sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. And always the
goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of
bronze therein.
  After a while, as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their
greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley
and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal
dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stript of
interest and new colours.  And as I looked upon the little gate in the mighty
wall, I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was
entered, there would be no return.
  So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the
ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. And I would tell
myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more
lovely and radiant as well.
  Then one night in the dream-city of Zakarion I found a yellowed papyrus
filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city, and who
were too wise ever to be born in the waking world.  Therein were written many
things concerning the world of dream, and among them was lore of a golden
valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wall pierced by a little
bronze gate.  When I saw this lore, I knew that it touched on the scenes I had
haunted, and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus.
  Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the
irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not
which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross for ever into the unknown
land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be
more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. So when I learned of
the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through, I resolved to take
it when next I awaked.
  Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley
and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antique wall, I saw
that the small gate of bronze was ajar.  From beyond came a glow that weirdly
lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted
on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never
return.
  But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and dream pushed me
through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new
realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and
illimitable space.  So, happier than I had ever dared hope to be, I dissolved
again into that native infinty of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life
had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

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"Memory" by H. P. Lovecraft


  In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path
for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great
upas-tree.  And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not,
move forms not meant to be beheld.  Rank is the herbage on each slope, where
evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces,
twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up
marble pavements laid by forgotten hands.  And in trees that grow gigantic in
crumbling courtyards leap little apes, while in and out of deep treasure-vaults
writhe poison serpents and scaly things without a name.
  Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets of dank moss, and mighty
were the walls from which they fell.  For all time did their builders erect
them, and in sooth they yet serve nobly, for beneath them the grey toad makes
his habitation.
  At the very bottom of the valley lies the river Than, whose waters are slimy
and filled with weeds.  From hidden springs it rises, and to subterranean
grottoes it flows, so that the Daemon of the Valley knows not why its water are
red, nor whither they are bound.
  The Genie that haunts the moonbeams spake to the Daemon of the Valley,
saying, "I am old, and forget much.  Tell me the deeds and aspect and name of
them who built these things of Stone."  And the Daemon replied, "I am Memory,
and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old.  These beings were like the
waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for
they were but of the moment.  Their aspect I recall dimly, it was like to that
of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed
with that of the river.  These beings of yesterday were called Man."
  So the Genie flew back to the thin horned moon, and the Daemon looked
intently at a little ape in a tree that grew in a crumbling courtyard.

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"What the Moon Brings" H. P. Lovecraft


  I hate the moon -- I am afraid of it -- for when it shines on certain scenes
familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
  It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old garden
where I wandered; the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of
foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams.  And as I walked by the
shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if
those placid waters were drawn on in resistless currents to strange oceans that
are not in the world.  Silent and sparkling, bright and baleful, those
moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks
white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in the opiate night-wind and dropped
despairingly into the stream, swirling away horribly under the arched, carven
bridge, and staring back with the sinister resignation of calm, dead faces.
  And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet
and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of the dead faces,
I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by day the walls
were, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and paths, flowers and
shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the yellow-litten stream past
grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble.  And the lips of the dead
lotos-faces whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my steps till
the stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and
beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea.
  Upon that sea the hateful moon shone, and over its unvocal waves weird
perfumes breeded.  And as I saw therein the lotos-faces vanish, I longed for
nets that I might capture them and learn from them the secrets which the moon
had brought upon the night.  But when that moon went over to the west and the
still tide ebbed from the sullen shore, I saw in that light old spires that the
waves almost uncovered, and white columns gay with festoons of green seaweed.
And knowing that to this sunken place all the dead had come, I trembled and did
not wish again to speak with the lotos-faces.
  Yet when I saw afar out in the sea a black condor descend from the sky to
seek rest on a vast reef, I would fain have questioned him, and asked him of
those whom I had known when they were alive.  This I would have asked him had
he not been so far away, but he was very far, and could not be seen at all when
he drew nigh that gigantic reef.
  So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming the
spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city.  And as I
watched, my nostrils tried to close against the perfume-conquering stench of
the world's dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the
flesh of the churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms to gnaw and glut upon.
  Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but the puffy worms of
the sea need no moon to feed by.  And as I watched the ripples that told of the
writhing of worms beneath, I felt a new chill from afar out whither the condor
had flown, as if my flesh had caught a horror before my eyes had seen it.
  Nor had my flesh trembled without cause, for when I raised my eyes I saw that
the waters had ebbed very low, shewing much of the vast reef whose rim I had
seen before.  And when I saw that the reef was but the black basalt crown of a
shocking eikon whose monstrous forehead now shone in the dim moonlight and
whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I shrieked and
shrieked lest the hidden face rise above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes
look at me after the slinking away of that leering and treacherous yellow moon.
  And to escape this relentless thing I plunged gladly and unhesitantly into
the stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and sunken streets fat sea-worms
feast upon the world's dead.

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"Azathoth" by H. P. Lovecraft, circa 1922


  When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when
grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow
none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning
stripped Earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted
phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these things had come
to pass, and childish hopes had gone away for ever, there was a man who
traveled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world's dreams had
fled.
  Of the name and abode of this man but little is written, for they were of the
waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to know
that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, and that
he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room
whose one window opened not on the fields and groves but on a dim court where
other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only
walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned far out and peered aloft at
the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive
to madness a man who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night
after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things
beyond the waking world and the greyness of tall cities.  After years he began
to call the slow-sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they
glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many
secret vistas whose existence no common eye suspects.  And one night a mighty
gulf was bridged, and the dream-haunted skies swelled down to the lonely
watcher's window to merge with the close air of his room and make him a part of
their fabulous wonder.
  There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust
of gold; vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and
heavy with perfumes from beyond the worlds.  Opiate oceans poured there, litten
by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange
dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable deeps.  Noiseless infinity eddied
around the dreamer and wafted him away without even touching the body that
leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's
calendars the tides of far spheres bore him gently to join the dreams for which
he longed; the dreams that men have lost.  And in the course of many cycles
they tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore; a green shore
fragrant with lotus-blossoms and starred by red camalates...

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