H.P. Lovecraft. Azathoth
Azathoth
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written June 1922
Published 1938 in Leaves, Vol. 2: p. 107.
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 the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more
of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these
things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a
man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's
dreams had fled.
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the
waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to
say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned,
that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to
a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to 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 so
far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls
and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much,
the dweller in that ro0m used night after night to lean out and peer aloft
to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the 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 existance no common
eye suspected. 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 to 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 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 depths.
Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without
touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days
not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him
gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping
on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and
starred by red camalotes...
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