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 & 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.
- H.P. Lovecraft
"Hallowe'en in a Suburb" first published in The National Amateur, March 1926 (as “In a Suburb”)
An addendum to TA's '09 Halloween post music links: more "Classics from the Crypt"-
Nuages Gris- Franz Liszt
Toccata (from Suite Gothique)- L. Boellman
Pluto, Lord of the Underworld (from The Planets)- Gustav Holst
L'Escalier du Diable- Gyorgy Ligeti
Catacombs (from Pictures at an Exhibition)- Mussorgsky
March to the Scaffold (from Symphonie Fantastique)- Hector Berlioz
Infernal Dance (from the Firebird Suite)- Igor Stravinsky
Bonus Track: Toccata & Fugue in D Minor (youtube clip from Disney's Fantasia, 1940)- J.S. Bach
Happy Halloween, everyone.
-Maureen Lang
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