I love The Highwayman by Lord Dunsany. It’s a terrific twelve minute tale, a prose poem of career criminals turned beneficent brigands. And my friend Mike Vendetti liked it a whole bunch too, have a listen a listen to his reading of it! |MP3|
Here’s a fully illustrated |PDF|.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Alethia Phrikodes is a long poem by H.P. Lovecraft. The title, by the way, is from Greek, and means “Frightful Truth.”
Following the title there is a short line, in Latin, reading:
“Omnia risus et omnis pulvis et omna nihil.”
Omni = all
risus = laughter
pulvis = dust
nihil = nothing
That could be translated to:
“Everything is a laugh and everything is nothing.” or maybe “All is a laugh and all is dust.” or “All laughter is all dust is all nothing.” or “All the laughter and all the dust and all the nothing.”
I found Alethia Phrikodes in the pages of the July 1952 issue of Weird Tales. But, subsequent research shows that it’s actually a segment extracted from an even longer, and much earlier, poem, entitled The Poe-et’s Nightmare (first published in The Vagrant, No. 8, July 1918).
Beyond being really cool Alethia Phrikodes is also, apparently, Lovecraft’s “first enunciation of cosmicism.”*
And so here’s Mr. Jim Moon’s beautiful narration of it |MP3| (12 minutes). To go with it check out this |PDF| which includes the text and the gorgeous art by Jon Arfstrom (from it’s publication in Weird Tales).
Posted by Jesse Willis
*Notes on a manuscript version are available HERE.
Wayne June‘s animated reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s The City And The Sea is absolutely haunting.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The City in the Sea by Edgar Allan Poe
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
Here’s the audio, as narrated by Mister Jim Moon:
The City In The Sea was published in this form in the Broadway Journal, August 30, 1845:
Posted by Jesse Willis
First published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1947, this short poem has never been reprinted.
DEATH
by Clarence E. FlynnWhy do you fear me?
I am your friend.
I but guide trav’lers
Rounding the bend-
Lead them to freedom
From time and age,
Help them start writing
On a new page….Seek for me never,
Keep your course true-
When I am needed
I’ll come to you,
Then I will show you
Roads without end-
Why do you fear me?
I am your friend.
Listen to Mister Jim Moon‘s reading of it: |MP3|
Posted by Jesse Willis