Poetry and the Gods by H.P. Lovecraft and Anna Helen Crofts
Poetry and the Gods
by H.P. Lovecraft and Anna Helen Crofts
Written 1920 
Published September 1920 in The United Amateur, Vol. 20, No. 1, p. 1-4. 
A damp gloomy evening in April it was, just after the close of the Great War, 
when Marcia found herself alone with strange thoughts and wishes, unheard-of 
yearnings which floated out of the spacious twentieth-century drawing room, up 
the deeps of the air, and eastward to olive groves in distant Arcady which she 
had seen only in her dreams. She had entered the room in abstraction, turned off 
the glaring chandeliers, and now reclined on a soft divan by a solitary lamp 
which shed over the reading table a green glow as soothing as moonlight when it 
issued through the foliage about an antique shrine. 
Attired simply, in a low-cut black evening dress, she appeared outwardly a 
typical product of modern civilization; but tonight she felt the immeasurable 
gulf that separated her soul from all her prosaic surroundings. Was it because 
of the strange home in which she lived, that abode of coldness where relations 
were always strained and the inmates scarcely more than strangers? Was it that, 
or was it some greater and less explicable misplacement in time and space, 
whereby she had been born too late, too early, or too far away from the haunts 
of her spirit ever to harmonize with the unbeautiful things of contemporary 
reality? To dispel the mood which was engulfing her more and more deeply each 
moment, she took a magazine from the table and searched for some healing bit of 
poetry. Poetry had always relieved her troubled mind better than anything else, 
though many things in the poetry she had seen detracted from the influence. Over 
parts of even the sublimest verses hung a chill vapor of sterile ugliness and 
restraint, like dust on a window-pane through which one views a magnificent 
sunset. 
Listlessly turning the magazine’s pages, as if searching for an elusive 
treasure, she suddenly came upon something which dispelled her languor. An 
observer could have read her thoughts and told that she had discovered some 
image or dream which brought her nearer to her unattained goal than any image or 
dream she had seen before. It was only a bit of vers libre, that pitiful 
compromise of the poet who overleaps prose yet falls short of the divine melody 
of numbers; but it had in it all the unstudied music of a bard who lives and 
feels, who gropes ecstatically for unveiled beauty. Devoid of regularity, it yet 
had the harmony of winged, spontaneous words, a harmony missing from the formal, 
convention-bound verse she had known. As she read on, her surroundings gradually 
faded, and soon there lay about her only the mists of dream, the purple, 
star-strewn mists beyond time, where only Gods and dreamers walk. 
  Moon over Japan, 
  White butterfly moon! 
  Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream 
  To the sound of the cuckoo’s call... 
  The white wings of moon butterflies 
  Flicker down the streets of the city, 
  Blushing into silence the useless wicks of sound-lanterns in the hands of 
girls 
  Moon over the tropics, 
  A white-curved bud 
  Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven... 
  The air is full of odours 
  And languorous warm sounds... 
  A flute drones its insect music to the night 
  Below the curving moon-petal of the heavens. 
  Moon over China, 
  Weary moon on the river of the sky, 
  The stir of light in the willows is like the flashing of a thousand silver 
minnows 
  Through dark shoals; 
  The tiles on graves and rotting temples flash like ripples, 
  The sky is flecked with clouds like the scales of a dragon. 
Amid the mists of dream the reader cried to the rhythmical stars, of her delight 
at the coming of a new age of song, a rebirth of Pan. Half closing her eyes, she 
repeated words whose melody lay hidden like crystals at the bottom of a stream 
before dawn, hidden but to gleam effulgently at the birth of day. 
  Moon over Japan, 
  White butterfly moon! 
  Moon over the tropics, 
  A white curved bud 
  Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven. 
  The air is full of odours 
  And languorous warm sounds... 
  Moon over China, 
  Weary moon on the river of the sky... 
Out of the mists gleamed godlike the torm ot a youth, in winged helmet and 
sandals, caduceus-bearing, and of a beauty like to nothing on earth. Before the 
face of the sleeper he thrice waved the rod which Apollo had given him in trade 
for the nine-corded shell of melody, and upon her brow he placed a wreath of 
myrtle and roses. Then, adoring, Hermes spoke: 
"0 Nymph more fair than the golden-haired sisters of Cyene or the sky-inhabiting 
Atlantides, beloved of Aphrodite and blessed of Pallas, thou hast indeed 
discovered the secret of the Gods, which lieth in beauty and song. 0 Prophetess 
more lovely than the Sybil of Cumae when Apollo first knew her, thou has truly 
spoken of the new age, for even now on Maenalus, Pan sighs and stretches in his 
sleep, wishful to wake and behold about him the little rose-crowned fauns and 
the antique Satyrs. In thy yearning hast thou divined what no mortal, saving 
only a few whom the world rejects, remembereth: that the Gods were never dead, 
but only sleeping the sleep and dreaming the dreams of Gods in lotos-filled 
Hesperian gardens beyond the golden sunset. And now draweth nigh the time of 
their awakening, when coldness and ugliness shall perish, and Zeus sit once more 
on Olympus. Already the sea about Paphos trembleth into a foam which only 
ancient skies have looked on before, and at night on Helicon the shepherds hear 
strange murmurings and half-remembered notes. Woods and fields are tremulous at 
twilight with the shimmering of white saltant forms, and immemorial Ocean yields 
up curious sights beneath thin moons. The Gods are patient, and have slept long, 
but neither man nor giant shall defy the Gods forever. In Tartarus the Titans 
writhe and beneath the fiery Aetna groan the children of Uranus and Gaea. The 
day now dawns when man must answer for centuries of denial, but in sleeping the 
Gods have grown kind and will not hurl him to the gulf made for deniers of Gods. 
Instead will their vengeance smite the darkness, fallacy and ugliness which have 
turned the mind of man; and under the sway of bearded Saturnus shall mortals, 
once more sacrificing unto him, dwell in beauty and delight. This night shalt 
thou know the favour of the Gods, and behold on Parnassus those dreams which the 
Gods have through ages sent to earth to show that they are not dead. For poets 
are the dreams of Gods, and in each and every age someone hath sung unknowingly 
the message and the promise from the lotosgardens beyond the sunset.” 
Then in his arms Hermes bore the dreaming maiden through the skies. Gentle 
breezes from the tower of Aiolas wafted them high above warm, scented seas, till 
suddenly they came upon Zeus, holding court upon double-headed Parnassus, his 
golden throne flanked by Apollo and the Muses on the right hand, and by 
ivy-wreathed Dionysus and pleasure-flushed Bacchae on the left hand. So much of 
splendour Marcia had never seen before, either awake or in dreams, but its 
radiance did her no injury, as would have the radiance of lofty Olympus; for in 
this lesser court the Father of Gods had tempered his glories for the sight of 
mortals. Before the laurel-draped mouth of the Corycian cave sat in a row six 
noble forms with the aspect of mortals, but the countenances of Gods. These the 
dreamer recognized from images of them which she had beheld, and she knew that 
they were none else than the divine Maeonides, the avernian Dante, the more than 
mortal Shakespeare, the chaos-exploring Milton, the cosmic Goethe and the 
musalan Keats. These were those messengers whom the Gods had sent to tell men 
that Pan had passed not away, but only slept; for it is in poetry that Gods 
speak to men. Then spake the Thunderer: 
"0 Daughter—for, being one of my endless line, thou art indeed my 
daughter—behold upon ivory thrones of honour the august messengers Gods have 
sent down that in the words and writing of men there may be still some traces of 
divine beauty. Other bards have men justly crowned with enduring laurels, but 
these hath Apollo crowned, and these have I set in places apart, as mortals who 
have spoken the language of the Gods. Long have we dreamed in lotosgardens 
beyond the West, and spoken only through our dreams; but the time approaches 
when our voices shall not be silent. It is a time of awakening and change. Once 
more hath Phaeton ridden low, searing the fields and drying the streams. In Gaul 
lone nymphs with disordered hair weep beside fountains that are no more, and 
pine over rivers turned red with the blood of mortals. Ares and his train have 
gone forth with the madness of Gods and have returned Deimos and Phobos glutted 
with unnatural delight. Tellus moons with grief, and the faces of men are as the 
faces of Erinyes, even as when Astraea fled to the skies, and the waves of our 
bidding encompassed all the land saving this high peak alone. Amidst this chaos, 
prepared to herald his coming yet to conceal his arrival, even now toileth our 
latest born messenger, in whose dreams are all the images which other messengers 
have dreamed before him. He it is that we have chosen to blend into one glorious 
whole all the beauty that the world hath known before, and to write words 
wherein shall echo all the wisdom and the loveliness of the past. He it is who 
shall proclaim our return and sing of the days to come when Fauns and Dryads 
shall haunt their accustomed groves in beauty. Guided was our choice by those 
who now sit before the Corycian grotto on thrones of ivory, and in whose songs 
thou shalt hear notes of sublimity by which years hence thou shalt know the 
greater messenger when he cometh. Attend their voices as one by one they sing to 
thee here. Each note shall thou hear again in the poetry which is to come, the 
poetry which shall bring peace and pleasure to thy soul, though search for it 
through bleak years thou must. Attend with diligence, for each chord that 
vibrates away into hiding shall appear again to thee after thou hast returned to 
earth, as Alpheus, sinking his waters into the soul of Hellas, appears as the 
crystal arethusa in remote Sicilia." 
Then arose Homeros, the ancient among bards, who took his lyre and chanted his 
hymn to Aphrodite. No word of Greek did Marcia know, yet did the message not 
fall vainly upon her ears, for in the cryptic rhythm was that which spake to all 
mortals and Gods, and needed no interpreter. 
So too the songs of Dante and Goethe, whose unknown words dave the ether with 
melodies easy to ready and adore. But at last remembered accents resounded 
before the listener. It was the Swan of Avon, once a God among men, and still a 
God among Gods: 
  Write, write, that from the bloody course of war, 
  My dearest master, your dear son, may hie; 
  Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far, 
  His name with zealous fervour sanctify. 
Accents still more familiar arose as Milton, blind no more, declaimed immortal 
harmony: 
  Or let thy lamp at midnight hour 
  Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
  Where I might oft outwatch the Bear 
  With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
  The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
  What worlds or what vast regions hold 
  The immortal mind, that hath forsook 
  Her mansion in this fleshy nook. 
    * * * * * 
  Sometime let gorgeous tragedy 
  In sceptered pall come sweeping by, 
  Presenting Thebes, or Pelop’s line, 
  Or the tale of Troy divine. 
  Last of all came the young voice of Keats, closest of all the messengers to 
the beauteous faun-folk: 
  Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
  Are sweeter, therefore, yet sweep pipes, play on... 
    * * * * * 
  When old age shall this generation waste, 
  Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st 
  "Beauty is truth -- truth beauty" -- that is all 
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 
As the singer ceased, there came a sound in the wind blowing from far Egypt, 
where at night Aurora mourns by the Nile for her slain Memnon. To the feet of 
the Thunderer flew the rosy-fingered Goddess and, kneeling, cried, "Master, it 
is time I unlocked the Gates of the East.” And Phoebus, handing his lyre to 
Calliope, his bride among the Muses, prepared to depart for the jewelled and 
column-raised Palace of the Sun, where fretted the steeds already harnessed to 
the golden car of Day. So Zeus descended from his caryen throne and placed his 
hand upon the head of Marcia, saying: 
"Daughter, the dawn is nigh, and it is well that thou shouldst return before the 
awakening of mortals to thy home. Weep not at the bleakness of thy life, for the 
shadow of false faiths will soon be gone and the Gods shall once more walk among 
men. Search thou unceasingly for our messenger, for in him wilt thou find peace 
and comfort. By his word shall thy steps be guided to happiness, and in his 
dreams of beauty shall thy spirit find that which it craveth.” As Zeus ceased, 
the young Hermes gently seized the maiden and bore her up toward the fading 
stars, up and westward over unseen seas. 
    * * * 
Many years have passed since Marcia dreamt of the Gods and of their Parnassus 
conclave. Tonight she sits in the same spacious drawing-room, but she is not 
alone. Gone is the old spirit of unrest, for beside her is one whose name is 
luminous with celebrity: the young poet of poets at whose feet sits all the 
world. He is reading from a manuscript words which none has ever heard before, 
but which when heard will bring to men the dreams and the fancies they lost so 
many centuries ago, when Pan lay down to doze in Arcady, and the great Gods 
withdrew to sleep in lotos-gardens beyond the lands of the Hesperides. In the 
subtle cadences and hidden melodies of the bard the spirit of the maiden had 
found rest at last, for there echo the divinest notes of Thracian Orpheus, notes 
that moved the very rocks and trees by Hebrus’ banks. The singer ceases, and 
with eagerness asks a verdict, yet what can Marcia say but that the strain is 
"fit for the Gods"? 
And as she speaks there comes again a vision of Parnassus and the far-off sound 
of a mighty voice saying, “By his word shall thy steps be guided to happiness, 
and in his dreams of beauty shall thy spirit find all that it craveth." 




© 1998-1999 William Johns
Last modified: 12/18/1999 18:44:57
