Was this your plan, foul spawn of cosmic mire, To freeze my soul to stone and icy fire, To carve me in the moon that all mankind May know its race is futile, weak and blind-- A horror-blasted statue in the sky, That does not live and nevermore can die? * * * * * FRAGMENT by Robert Nelson With the red bewitchment of the moon canines collect And feast and howl o'er carrion and orts and bones In green and putrid grots that echo shrill sea-moans; And huge and hoary plantigrades on crags most high, Hearing the maddened carnal ravings of the hounds, Huddle together on the topmost frozen mounds To hurl immense boulders on them until all die. * * * * * THE ELDER THING by William Lumley Oh, have you seen the Elder Thing That creeps upon the hill-- A fearsome Thing with lurid eyes At night when all is still; A horror wrought of withered moss And foul primordial slime, Wherein there fester monstrously The evils of all time? With phosphorescent glow like naught That Nature might devise, All the fell ancient lore of earth Gleams hellish in its eyes. As night by night this Elder Thing Upon the hill doth creep, Awakened by men's blasphemies From out its age-long sleep. By monolith and haunted fen Down to the mandrake mere It prowls to meet the sheeted dead That squeak and gibber there; And nameless things, not beasts nor men, With bat-like creatures vie, And loathsome reptiles writhe and hiss Till daybreak pales the sky. A thousand shapes the Things-- A thousand shapes or none-- All forms of Fear since Earth was born It mirrors as its own; It apes each rhythmic Elder Sign As it doth onward creep, Awakened by man's blasphemies From out its age-long sleep. * * * * * THE GHOUL'S PARADE by Lionel Dilbeck When the bells toll midnight And Dark Things begin to roam, The old house shivers, and the Walls begin to moan. The rats stop their scurrying And everything is quiet; The moon rises, softly, As if in fright. The wind howls mournfully Through the skeleton trees, And the breath of corruption Is borne in on the breeze. The corpse in the cellar Mouths a slobbering curse; On those who have slit his throat, And robbed him of his purse. The maggots swarm in his rotten flesh, And he howls in mad despair; He shrieks and moans and rages And tears his gristly hair. He rages thus each night From midnight until one; And the maggots swarm and wiggle, And have their hellish fun.