Weird Tales Chapter IV & V
<u>Introduction</u><br/> <br/> Valleys dim and void of glee, philtres of ill-tempered lore,<br/> of absolution nevermore and satanic sorcery.<br/> Acts of the unspeakable, haunted moons and tragedies,<br/> death and ruin and debris.<br/> <br/> <u>In Rue d'Auseil</u><br/> <br/> Where in gruesome midnight hour <br/> a violin wildly plays. <br/> Sounds of evil, dreadful power <br/> and of unheard grace.<br/> <br/> In a dusty attic old in Rue d'Auseil<br/> a pandemonium of notes, of dark dismay<br/> resounds and opens wide the blackest night, <br/> summoned a pathway to the void of Rue d'Auseil.<br/> <br/> <u>In Gardens Red, Satanical</u><br/> <br/> O lovely demon, half-divine,<br/> hemlock and hydromel and gall.<br/> Honey and aconite and wine, <br/> mingle to make that mouth of thine.<br/> <br/> Thy mouth I love but most of all <br/> it is thy tears that I desire.<br/> Thy tears like fountain-drops that fall<br/> in gardens red, satanical.<br/> <br/> <u>Once I Was a Flower</u><br/> <br/> Once I was a flower, fair and large in shape,<br/> rainbow-winged the insects that from my chalice ate.<br/> The rivers sang me hymns of beauty without end<br/> and jewel-breasted birds were enticed by my scent.<br/> <br/> Then they cut the thread of all my emerald splendour<br/> and placed me in her hair to mingle with her grandeur.<br/> That night she passed away, I know not how she died,<br/> I had hoped to share with her eternal night.<br/> <br/> But a strange wind entered,<br/> spreading my leaves dead,<br/> scattering them in ruin on <br/> her cold death bed.<br/> <br/> Yet my ghost remained like a faint perfume,<br/> I do now haunt her grave, her silent chamber's <br/> gloom to stay with her forever like a faint perfume.<br/> <br/> <u>The Premature Burial</u><br/> <br/> Vague are the boundaries between life and death,<br/> does your life end the moment you take your last breath?<br/> Certain is the humid soil, the ultimateness of the urn,<br/> does there end your mortality, who's the one to discern?<br/> <br/> The ultimate woe, the true wretchedness,<br/> oh the agony of a premature burial.<br/> Lips of marble, gazeless eyed, cold as the grave,<br/> a body that died.<br/> <br/> Entombed into the darkness <br/> and supposed to rot but <br/> there is still warmth in this flesh <br/> and the flow of this blood.<br/> <br/> Shrieks of terror, sepulchral aghast,<br/> ensnared in the sarcophagus<br/> a never-ending nightmare to last.<br/> <br/> Dark and cold, shrouds of mould,<br/> deathless dread, envy the dead.<br/> Lightless tomb, inverted womb, <br/> fade to grey with tart bouquet.<br/> <br/> <u>Mother of Toads</u><br/> <br/> Come hither, come hither,<br/> why the haste little one?<br/> She ogled the young man<br/> soon to be gone.<br/> <br/> With amphibian eyes and batrachian throat,<br/> slimy and flabby, the mother of toads.<br/> <br/> A witch of old times, enormous her size,<br/> hideous her aspects, malicious her mind.<br/> She handed a drink, the poisonous brew <br/> this philtre of evil he drank from and lo!<br/> <br/> His senses were altered and drawn he was soon <br/> to her abomination and in the light of the moon <br/> they mingled and wallowed like lovers till dawn, <br/> then he was swallowed by the amphibian spawn.<br/> <br/> Where he was gone<br/> in Averoigne no one could tell,<br/> only the toads croaked him a farewell.<br/> <br/> <u>The Graveyard by Nyght in a Thunderstorm</u><br/> <br/> <i>(Instrumental)</i><br/> <br/> <u>The Undying One</u><br/> <br/> Thousands of years I have seen the moon <br/> waxing and waning, vanish at days.<br/> Weary and vexed I became all too soon<br/> of men and his dull and trivial ways.<br/> <br/> The earth is too small for such as I,<br/> the oceans are still and grey yet the sky.<br/> <br/> The heavens unrolled before my eyes,<br/> just like a scroll I could read from the skies.<br/> No secret was kept, no story untold,<br/> knowledge I found in the deepest deeps.<br/> <br/> At mountains of ice, <br/> atop inky black seas,<br/> no beauty unseen, <br/> no dream left to dream.<br/> <br/> Dark fire, grim moons, <br/> cold forests, old doom.<br/> <br/> For life and death have whispered secretly <br/> to me in ancient runes of wisdom old.<br/> And all that men has ever sought to learn,<br/> no mystery left for me here to unfold.<br/> <br/> Let me pass away like a faint smoke flying by,<br/> immerse myself into voids where no dream has ever lived to die<br/> Vanish like the crests of the waves amidst the endless sea<br/> but I might live 'til the sun grew cold and ceased to be.<br/> <br/> <u>Evil Dreams Run Deep</u><br/> <br/> In quest of a new home, <br/> following god's road.<br/> With wishes and with prayers,<br/> with kettle and a goat.<br/> <br/> The wind, the wind<br/> howled in nightly gales.<br/> The wood, the wood<br/> haunted by weird tales.<br/> <br/> So dark, so grim, so cold,<br/> and the forest did lay in an unholy sleep.<br/> And so vile a venom old,<br/> evil dreams run deep, evil dreams run deep.<br/> <br/> Enchanted thousandfold,<br/> and the trees did weep, the trees did weep.<br/> So dark, so grim, so cold,<br/> the evil dreams run deep, so deep.<br/> <br/> Between firs and moors,<br/> the promised clearing lay.<br/> But a darkness loomed <br/> out there even at bright day.<br/> <br/> The wind, the wind<br/> whispered in turmoil.<br/> The earth, the earth<br/> foul with hexed soil.<br/> <br/> So dark, so grim, so cold,<br/> and the forest did lay in an unholy sleep.<br/> And so vile a venom old,<br/> evil dreams run deep, evil dreams run deep.<br/> <br/> Enchanted thousandfold,<br/> and the trees did weep, the trees did weep.<br/> So dark, so grim, so cold,<br/> the evil dreams run deep, so deep.<br/> <br/> <u>The Witch with Eyes of Amber</u><br/> <br/> I met a witch with amber eyes <br/> who slowly sang a scarlet rune,<br/> shifting to an icy laughter <br/> like the laughter of the moon.<br/> <br/> Red as a wanton's was her mouth <br/> and fair the breast she bade me take.<br/> With a word that clove and clung, <br/> burning like a furnace-flake.<br/> <br/> But from her bright and lifted bosom,<br/> when I touched it with my hand,<br/> came the many-needled coldness<br/> of a glacier-taken land.<br/> <br/> And lo, the witch with eyes of amber<br/> vanished like a blown-out flame.<br/> Leaving but the lichen-eaten stone <br/> that wore a blotted name.<br/> <br/> <u>Canticle</u><br/> <br/> In my heart a wizard book,<br/> only love shall ever look.<br/> Darling, when thou readest there,<br/> wisely falter and forbear.<br/> <br/> Ere thou turn'st the pages olden,<br/> deeply writ and deeply folden.<br/> Where the legends of lost moons<br/> lie in chill unchanging runes.<br/> <br/> Trifle not with charm or spell, <br/> heptagram or pentacle.<br/> Leave in silence, long unsaid,<br/> all the words that wake the dead.<br/> <br/> Darling, in my heart withholden,<br/> letters rubrical and golden.<br/> Tell the secret of our love and <br/> the philtred spells thereof.<br/> <br/> There, my memories of thee,<br/> half of all the gramarie are a firm unfading lore:<br/> <br/> Read but these and read no more!<br/> <br/> Shall it profit thee to find<br/> loves that went with snow and wind?<br/> Leave in silence, long unsaid,<br/> all the words that wake the dead.<br/> <br/> <u>To Drink from Lethe</u><br/> <br/> In quest of her whom I had lost<br/> I found a shore to rest at last.<br/> <br/> And in this waters a shimmering,<br/> phantasmal lights like echoes of the past.<br/> I saw them drinking from the blackened flow,<br/> with empty eyes they stared at me aghast.<br/> <br/> Then I found the one <br/> I had been longing for,<br/> together we would drink <br/> from waters of this shore.<br/> <br/> And dreamed a dreamless <br/> dream of nothingness abound.<br/> As we forgot to be, oblivion we found,<br/> we drank from Lethe to be reborn.<br/> <br/> So trinke vom Fluß des Vergessens, <br/> den dunklen Strömen des Lethe,<br/> in dem die Sterne leuchtend schwimmen <br/> in der ewigen Schönheit des Nichts.
Submitted by johnmansley — May 09, 2026