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Astrophobos by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1918?Published July 1918 in The United Amateur
In the Midnight heaven's burning
Through the ethereal deeps afar
Once I watch'd with restless yearning
An alluring aureate star;
Ev'ry eve aloft returning
Gleaming nigh the Arctic Car.
Mystic waves of beauty blended
With the gorgeous golden rays
Phantasies of bliss descended
In a myrrh'd Elysian haze.
In the lyre-born chords extended
Harmonies of Lydian lays.
And (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,
Where the free and blessed dwell,
And each moment bears a treasure,
Freighted with the lotos-spell,
And there floats a liquid measure
From the lute of Israfel.
There (I told myself) were shining
Worlds of happiness unknown,
Peace and Innocence entwining
By the Crowned Virtue's throne;
Men of light, their thoughts refining
Purer, fairer, than my own.
Thus I mus'd when o'er the vision
Crept a red delirious change;
Hope dissolving to derision,
Beauty to distortion strange;
Hymnic chords in weird collision,
Spectral sights in endless range....
Crimson burn'd the star of madness
As behind the beams I peer'd;
All was woe that seem'd but gladness
Ere my gaze with Truth was sear'd;
Cacodaemons, mir'd with madness,
Through the fever'd flick'ring leer'd....
Now I know the fiendish fable
The the golden glitter bore;
Now I shun the spangled sable
That I watch'd and lov'd before;
But the horror, set and stable,
Haunts my soul forevermore!

Azathoth by H. P. Lovecraft
Written June 1922
Published 1938 in Leaves
When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey
cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none
might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped
the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets asang no more of twisted phantoms
seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass,
and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on
a quest into spaces whither the worlds dreams had fled.
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking
world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he
dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all
day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window
opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows
stared in dull dispair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows,
except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that
passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who
dreams and reads much, the dweller in that rom used night after night to lean
out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world
and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by
name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight;
till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common
eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted
skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of
his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of
gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy
perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that
the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and
sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied aroud the dreamer
and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the
lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calanders the tides of far
spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly
left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus
blossums and starred by red camalates...

Festival by H.P. Lovecraft
Published December 1926 in Weird Tales

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of
feastings unhallowed and old.
There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance
round a Yule-altar fungous and white.
To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the thick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark,
from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.
And mayst thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world
shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

Nathicana by H.P. Lovecraft
Published in the Vagrant in Spring 1927

It was in the pale garden of Zais;
The mist-shrouded gardens of Zais,
Where blossoms the white naphalot,
The redolent herald of midnight.
There slumber the still lakes of crystal,
And streamlets that flow without murm'ring;
Smooth streamlets from caverns of Kathos
Where broodth the calm spirits of twilight.
And over the lakes and the streamlets
Are bridges of pure alabaster,
White bridges all cunningly carven
With figures of fairies and daemons.
Here glimmer strange suns and strange planets,
And strange is the crescent Bnapis
That sets 'yong the ivy-grown ramparts
Where thicken the dusk of the evening.
Here fall the white vapours of Yabon;
And here in the swirl of vapours
I saw the divine Nathicana;
The garlanded, white Nathicana;
The slow-eyed, red-lipped Nathicana;
The silver-voiced, sweet Nathicana;
The pale-rob'd, belov'd Nathicana.
And ever was she my beloved,
From ages when time was unfashioned
Now anything fashion'd but Yabon.
And here dwelt we ever and ever,
The innocent children of Zais,
At peace in the paths and the arbours,
White-crowned with the blest nephalote.
How oft would we float in the twilight
O'er flow'r-cover'd pastures and hillsides
All white with the lowly astalthon;
The lowly yet lovely astalthon,
And dream in a world made of dreaming
The dreams that are fairer than Aidenn;
Bright dreams that are truer than reason!
So dreamed and so lov'd we thro' ages,
Till came the cursed season of Dzannin;
The daemon-damn'd season of Dzannin;
When red shone the suns and the planets,
And red leamed the crescent Banapis,
And red fell the vapours of Yabon.
Then redden'd the blossoms and streamlets
And lakes that lay under the bridges,
And even the calm alabaster
glowed pink with uncanny reflections
Till all the carv'd fairies and daemons
Leer'd redly from the backgrounds of shadow.
Now redden'd my vision, and madly
I strove to peer thro' the dense curtain
And glimpsed the divine Nathicana;
The pure, ever-pale Nathicana;
The lov'd, the unchang'd Nathicana.
But vortex on vortex of madness
Beclouded my labouring vision;
My damnable, reddening vision
That built a new world for my seeing;
Anew world of redness and darkness,
A horrible coma call'd living
So now in this come call'd living
I view the bright phantons of beauty;
The false hollow phantoms of beauty
That cloak all the evils of Dzannin.
I view them with infinite longing,
So like do they seem to my lov'd one:
Yet foul for their eyes shines their evil;
Their cruel and pitilessevil,
More evil than Thaphron and Latgoz,
Twice ill fro its gorgeous concealment.
And only in slumbers of midnight
Appears the lost maid Nathicana,
The pallid, the pure Nathicana
Who fades at the glance of the dreamer.
Again and again do I seek her;
I woo with deep draughts of Plathotis,
Deep draughts brew'd in wine of Astarte
And strengthen'd with tears of long weeping.
I yearn for the gardens of Zais;
The lovely, lost garden of Zais
Where blossoms the white nephalot,
The redolent herald of midnight.
The last potent draught am I brewing;
A draught that the daemons delight ih;
A drught that will banish the redness;
The horrible coma call'd living.
Soon, soon, if I fail not in brewing,
The redness and madness will vanish,
And deep in the worm-people'd darkness
Will rot the base chains that hav bound me.
Once more shall the gardens of Zais
Dawn white on my long-tortur'd vision,
Andthere midst the vapours of Yabon
Will stand the divine Nathicana;
The deathless, restor'd Nathicana
whose like is not met with in living.

For Nathicana in a letter to Donald Wandrei written August 2, 1927, Lovecraft said that this
poem was supposed to be a "parody on those stylistic excesses which really have
no basic meaning". In his response ten days later, Wandrei said "It is a rare
and curious kind of literary freak, a satire too good, so that, instead of
parodying, it possesses, the original."