FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 157 - The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

We open this year's selection of festive frights with a classic poem by Edgar Allan Poe, a tale told in verse, whose events unfold on a dark night "in the bleak December"... 

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FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 120 - Halloween in a Suburb by HP Lovecraft

Halloween in a Suburb 

by HP Lovecraft

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,

     And the trees have a silver glare;

Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,

     And the harpies of upper air,

     That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread

     Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,

But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep

     Where the rivers of madness stream

     Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves

     In the meadows that shimmer pale,

And comes to twine where the headstones shine

     And the ghouls of the churchyard wail

     For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change

     That tore from the past its own

Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow’r

     Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne

     And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain

     That moons long-forgotten saw,

And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,

     Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw

     To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,

     The ugliness and the pest

Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,

     Shall some day be with the rest,

     And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,

     And the leprous spires ascend;

For new and old alike in the fold

     Of horror and death are penn’d,

     For the hounds of Time to rend.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD -  Halloween in a Suburb by HP Lovecraft

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FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 062 - To Autumn by John Keats

A seasonal reading of a much loved classic poem for this time of year...

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HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN 

FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 040 - Living Night by MR James

Continuing our season of MR James readings, things take a dark turn with some verses penned about what goes on at Great Livermore in the dead of night...

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A Little Something for #WorldPoetryDay

Care for an apple?

Come now child,

Its ripe from the tree, 

Raw red and wild, 

Just one taste

And you will be free...

verse and art by Jim Moon 

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The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe

MERLIN by Edwin Muir

THE DARKLING THRUSH

An atmospheric verse for New Year by Thomas Hardy 

SOLOMON KANE'S HOMECOMING by Robert E Howard

For SFFaudio, Mr Jim Moon reads a weird verse by Robert E Howard featuring his 17th century Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane...

SOLOMON KANE'S HOMECOMING at SFFaudio

SHADWELL STAIR by Wilfred Owen

Mr Jim Moon reads a haunting by Wilfred Owen

SHADOW-BRIDE by JRR TOLKEIN

Mr Jim Moon reads a haunting folkloric tale told in verse by JRR Tolkein

ALETHEIA PHRIKODES by HP Lovecraft

The June 1952 issue of legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales printed an epic length poem by HP Lovecraft - Aletheia Phrikodes, illustrated by John Arfstrom. It is actually the middle section of a longer piece entitled The Poe-t's Nightmare which originally appeared in a fanzine The Vagrant in 1918. 

For SFFaudio, Mr Jim Moon reads Aletheia Phrikodes

THE PORT by HP Lovecraft

For SFFaudio, Mr Jim Moon reads HP Lovecraft's sonnet The Port from Fungi From Yuggoth

HEAR IT HERE - http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=47648

THE CITY IN THE SEA by Edgar Allan Poe

Mr Jim Moon reads a classic weird verse by that master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe

LIVING NIGHT by MR James

Mr Jim Moon reads a rare excursion into the world of poetry 

from that legendary master of ghost stories, MR James

THE MESSENGER by HP Lovecraft

Mr Jim Moon reads a short weird poem by the legendary HP Lovecraft

THE CASTLE OF DREAMS by Clark Ashton Smith

The Castle of Dreams a poem by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Mr Jim Moon. First published in The Potion of Dreams - The Fugitive Poems of Clark Ashton Smith (1975).

listen to ‘The Castle of Dreams’ on Audioboo

The Castle of Dreams
by Clark Ashton Smith

It lies beyond the farthest sea,
This castle where onto I flee
When life and time hang wearily.
Yet though so far, 'tis strangely nigh:
Within the breathing of a sigh
One gains the walls secure and high
Of the Castle of Dreams.

Divinely beautiful and great,
Of pearl each dome and tower, and gate,
It stands, a hold of kingly state.
There gyving Time and Space are not,
And cares of Life are all forgot.
No breath of restless change is brought
To the Castle of Dreams.

I walk each wondrous court and hall,
Their varied treasures mine at call,
For there I am the lord af all.
If gold and gems of land and sea,
And broad estates were offered me,
I would not take them for the key
Of the Castle of Dreams.

TWILIGHT ON THE SNOW by Clark Ashton Smith

Twilight on the Snow, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith read by Mr Jim Moon. First published in the collection Ebony and Crystal (1922)

listen to ‘Twilight on the Snow’ on Audioboo

Twilight on the Snow
by Clark Ashton Smith

Before the hill's high altar bowed,
The trees are Druids, weird and white,
Facing the vision of the light
With ancient lips to silence vowed.

No certain sound the woods aver,
Nor motion save of formless wings—
Filled with phantasmal flutterings,
With thronging gloom and shadow-stir.

Unseen, unheard, amid the dell
Lie all the winds that mantic trees
Have lulled with crystal warlockries
And bound about with Merlin-spell.


Photograph by Mr Jim Moon

THE SONG OF THE NECROMANCER by Clark Ashton Smith

The Song of the Necromancer, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith first published in Weird Tales V29 #2 (1937) and later in the Arkham House collection Selected Poems (1971) read by Mr Jim Moon.

listen to ‘The Song of the Necromancer’ on Audioboo

The Song of the Necromancer
by Clark Ashton Smith

I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,
And spectres terrible and fair
Shall wake the riven world at noon.

The star that was mine empery
In dust upon unwinnowed skies:
But primal dreams have made me wise,
And soon the shattered years shall rise
To my remembered sorcery.

To mantic mutterings, brief and low,
My palaces shall lift amain,
My bowers bloom; I will regain
The lips whereon my lips have lain
In rose-red twilights long ago.

Before my murmured exorcism
The world, a wispy wraith, shall flee:
A stranger earth, a weirder sea,
People with shapes of Fäery,
Shall swell upon the waste abysm.

The pantheons of darkened stars
Shall file athwart the crocus dawn;
Goddess and Gorgon, Lar and faun,
Shall tread the amaranthine lawn,
And giants fight their thunderous wars.

Like graven mountains of basalt,
Dark idols of my demons there
Shall tower through bright zones of air,
Fronting the sun with level stare;
And hell shall pave my deepest vault.

Phantom and fiend and sorceror
Shall serve me...till my term shall pass,
And I become no more, alas,
Than a frail shadow on the glass
Before some latter conjurer.

Cover art - Necromancer by AnaNevermajndSliver

THE NEREID by Clark Aston Smith

The Nereid, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith first published in the collection Ebony & Crystal (1922) read by Mr Jim Moon.

listen to ‘The Nereid’ on Audioboo

The Nereid

Her face the sinking stars desire:
Unto her place the slow deeps bring
Shadow of errant winds that wing
O'er sterile gulfs of foam and fire.

Her beauty is the light of pearls.
All stars and dreams and sunsets die
To make the fluctuant glooms that lie
Around her; and low noonlight swirls

Down ocean's firmamental deep
To weave for who glimmers there
Elusive visions, vague and fair;
And night is as a dreamless sleep:

She has not known the night's unrest
Nor the white curse of clearer day;
The tremors of the tempest play
Like slow delight about her breast.

The berylline pallors of her face
Illume the kingdom of the drowned.
In her the love that none has found,
The unflowering rapture, folded grace,

Await some lover strayed and lone,
Some god misled, who shall not come
Though the decrescent seas lie dumb
And sunken in their wells of stone.

But nevermore of him, perchance,
Her enigmatic musings are,
Whose purpling tresses float afar
In grottoes of the last romance.

Serene, an immanence of fire
She dwells for ever, ocean-thralled,
Soul of the sea's vast emerald.
Her face the sinking stars desire.

(Cover art is A Sketch for A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse)