Polaris (1918)

***Polaris*** is a short work of fiction written in 1918 by Providence, Rhode Island born fantasy-horror novelist H. P. Lovecraft, later published in December 1920 within the amateur journal *The Philosopher*. The story revolves around an unnamed narrator's fixation with the pole star Polaris and dreams of awakening in a dreamrealm in a kingdom that's under seige.

## Plot

The narrator tells of their viewing the pole star each night, when, one night there is a great Aurora after which the narrator falls into a sleep and perceives a dream city "on a strange plateau in a hollow betwixt strange peaks", composed of "ghastly marble" in all architectural respects. He views the houses and streets of this city, perceiving "forms strangely robed, but at once noble and familiar" to be the inhabitants of this place.

The narrator awakes and from this point onwards begins to have dreams of this city when it is cloudy, eventually seeking to "define [his] relation to it" by entering the city with "at last a bodily form". At this point the narrator perceives the city's name is Olathoë on the plateau of Sarkis, and the siege of Inutos from the "unknown west" has threatened the land.

Within the dreamrealm Alos is the narrator's friend, and he sets the narrator upon "the watch-tower of Thapnen", denying him a warrior role for being "feeble and given to strange faintings when subjected to stress and hardships". Thereupon the watchtower the unnamed narrator perceives the Pole Star once more, and hears the following poem spoken from the star:

Slumber, watcher, till the spheres
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv’d, and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o’er
Shall the past disturb thy door.
Attempting to make meaning of this the narrator eventually succumbs to slumber, falling asleep and struggling to emerge from a dreamworld of daemons where the pole star is once more, described as "evil and monstrous, leers down from the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey.", a sentence taken almost verbatim from the first paragraph of the story. With that the story ends, the fate of Olathoë left uncertain.

## Links

* Read the story online
* Hear the story by YouTube channel *HorrorBabble*

## References

H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle

**By Lovecraft:** **Polaris (1918)** ☁ The White Ship (1919) ☁ The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919) ☁ The Cats of Ulthar (1920) ☁ Celephaïs (1920) ☁ Ex Oblivione (1920) ☁ Nyarlathotep (1920) ☁ The Quest of Iranon (1921) ☁ The Other Gods (1921) ☁ Azathoth (1922) ☁ Hypnos (1922) ☁ What the Moon Brings (1922) ☁ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926) ☁ The Outsider (1926) ☁ The Silver Key (1926) ☁ The Strange High House in the Mist (1926) ☁ The Thing in the Moonlight (1941) ☁ The Dreams in the Witch House (1932) ☁ Through the Gates of the Silver Key (1932)
**By Brian Lumley:** Hero of Dreams (1986) ☁ Ship of Dreams (1986) ☁ Mad Moon of Dreams (1987) ☁ Iced on Aran (1992)