Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night
I have lived o'er my lives without number
I have sounded all things with my sight
(And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright)

I have whirled with the earth at the dawning
When the sky was a vaporous flame
I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim
(Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name)

I had drifted o'er seas without ending
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-forked lightning is rending
That resound with hysterical cries
(With the moans of invisible daemons, that out of the green waters rise)

I have plunged like a deer through the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove
(And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers through dead branches
above)

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main
(And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things, I care not to gaze on again)

I have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace
I have trod its untenanted hall
Where the moon rising up from the valleys
Shows the tapestried things on the wall
(Strange figures discordantly woven, that I cannot endure to recall)

I have peered from the casements in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around
At the many-roofed village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground
(And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound)

I have haunted the tombs of the ages
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear
(And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer)

I was old when the pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-decked throne by the Nile
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile
(And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle)

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit
And great is the reach of its doom
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it
Nor can respite be found in the tomb
(Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom)

Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night
I have lived o'er my lives without number
I have sounded all things with my sight
(And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright)


(Original Poem "Nemesis" by H.P. Lovecraft.)