“Despair” by H.P. Lovecraft

Dan Schultz - Wanderer

O’er the midnight moorlands crying,

Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,

In the night-wind madly flying,

     Hellish forms with streaming hair;

In the barren branches creaking,

By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,

Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;

     Damn’d daemons of despair.

Once, I think I half remember,

Ere the grey skies of November

Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,

     Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;

Skies that now are dark were beaming,

Gold and azure, splendid seeming

Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—

     Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

But the stream of Time, swift flowing,

Brings the torment of half-knowing—

Dimly rushing, blindly going

     Past the never-trodden lea;

And the voyager, repining,

Sees the wicked death-fires shining,

Hears the wicked petrel’s whining

     As he helpless drifts to sea.

Evil wings in ether beating;

Vultures at the spirit eating;

Things unseen forever fleeting

     Black against the leering sky.

Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,

Clawing fiends of future sadness,

Mingle in a cloud of madness

     Ever on the soul to lie.

Thus the living, lone and sobbing,

In the throes of anguish throbbing,

With the loathsome Furies robbing

     Night and noon of peace and rest.

But beyond the groans and grating

Of abhorrent Life, is waiting

Sweet Oblivion, culminating

     All the years of fruitless quest.

(From Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft, pp.38-39 Publisher: Orion Publishing Group)