The Complete Poetry of H. P. Lovecraft

I saw the lake’s dull water glow

Till sunken things appear’d below.

There shone unnumber’d fathoms down,

The tow’rs of a forgotten town;

The tarnish’d domes and mossy walls;

Weed-tangled spires and empty halls

But the horror, set and stable,

Haunts my soul for evermore

The modern world, with all it’s care & pain,

To the Old Pagan Religion
Olympian gods! How can I let ye go

And pin my faith to this new Christian creed?

Can I resign the deities I know

For him who on a cross for man did bleed?

How in my weakness can my hopes depend

On one lone God, though mighty be his pow’r?

Why can Jove’s host no more assistance lend,

To soothe my pain, and cheer my troubled hour?

Are there no Dryads on these wooded mounts

O’er which I oft in desolation roam?

Are there no Naiads in these crystal founts?

Nor Nereids upon the Ocean foam?

Fast spreads the new; the older faith declines.

The name of Christ resounds upon the air.

But my wrack’d soul in solitude repines

And gives the Gods their last-receivèd pray’r.

Omnia risus et omnia pulvis et omnia nihil

True bliss, methinks, a man can only find

In virtuous life, & cultivated mind

Are bridges of pure alabaster,
White bridges all cunningly carven
With figures of fairies and daemons.
Here glimmer strange suns and strange planets

A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry

A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space

But now I knew that through the cosmic dome
Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.