H.P.+Lovecraft

H.P Lovecraft was an American author of horror, Fantasy, and science fiction, especially his subgenre of weird fiction. He was born on August 20, 1890 in his family home in Providence, Rhode Island. At the age of 8 his fathered died leaving HP. Lovecraft to be brought up by his two Aunts, his mother, and especially his grandfather, but after the death of his Grandfather the Lovecraft Family suffered into poverty and where kicked out of their Victorian mansion and forced to live on the streets. 1908-1913 After a mental breakdown in failing to enter into Brown University, Lovecraft lived a life of recluse developing an unhealthy love-hate relationship with his mother. He was pulled out this lifestyle by publishing a poetic letter of criticism attacking Fred Jackson for his work on //the Argosy//. It sparked outrage throughout; He then began to publish his own works of fiction and poetry in early 1914. H.P Lovecrafts works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, they usually challenged the values of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Christian Humanism. His guiding literary principle was what he termed Cosmicisim: a philosophy that life is incomprehensible to human minds and is fundamentally alien. His creation of the Cuthulu Mythos has also received a cult following into today’s society. Although his readership was limited during his lifetime Lovecrafts works have gained reputation over the decades and is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers.


 * Poems:**

hro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
 * Nemesis**

Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

I have sounded all things with my sight;

And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,

When the sky was a vaporous flame;

I have seen the dark universe yawning,

Where the black planets roll without aim;

Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

I had drifted o’er seas without ending,

Under sinister grey-clouded skies

That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,

That resound with hysterical cries;

With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.

I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches

Of the hoary primoridal grove,

Where the oaks feel the presence that marches

And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;

And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains

That rise barren and bleak from the plain,

I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains

That ooze down to the marsh and the main;

And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,

I have trod its untenanted hall,

Where the moon writhing up from the valleys

Shews the tapestried things on the wall;

Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

I have peer’d from the casement in wonder

At the mouldering meadows around,

At the many-roof’d village laid under

The curse of a grave-girdled ground;

And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,

I have flown on the pinions of fear

Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,

Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:

And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted

The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;

I was old in those epochs uncounted

When I, and I only, was vile;

And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,

And great is the reach of its doom;

Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,

Nor can respite be found in the tomb:

Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

I have sounded all things with my sight;

And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

**//Ode To the Old Pagan Religion//**

Olympian gods! How can I let ye go

And pin my faith to this new //Christian// creed?

Can I resign the deities I know

For him who on a cross for man did bleed?

How in my weakness can my hopes depend

On one lone God, though mighty be his pow’r?

Why can //Jove’s// host no more assistance lend,

To soothe my pain, and cheer my troubled hour?

Are there no Dryads on these wooded mounts

O’er which I oft in desolation roam?

Are there no Naiads in these crystal founts?

Nor Nereids upon the Ocean foam?

Fast spreads the new; the older faith declines.

The name of //Christ// resounds upon the air.

But my wrack’d soul in solitude repines

And gives the Gods their last-receivèd pray’r.

O'er the midnight moorlands crying,
 * Despair**

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 demons 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,

Bold 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.

Sources: Don G. Smith, //H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture//, 2005, //S. T. Joshi,// "A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft", //Wildside Press (1996),// David Punter, (1996), //The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day//, Vol. I, 'Modern Gothic",