Azathoth 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 forever,
there was a man who travelled 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 bare 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 camalotes.