POLARIS
Into the North Window of my chamber glows
the Pole Star with
uncanny light.
All through the long hellish hours of blackness
it shines there.
And in the autumn of the year,
when the winds from the north curse and whine,
and the red-leaved trees of the swamp mutter
things to one
another in the small hours of the morning
under the horned
waning moon,
I sit by the casement and watch that star.
Down from the heights reels the glittering
Cassiopeia as the
hours wear on,
while Charles' Wain lumbers up from behind
the vapour-soaked
swamp trees that sway in the night wind.
Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from
above the
cemetery on the low hillock,
and Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off
in the mysterious
east;
but still the Pole Star leers down from the
same place in the
black vault,
winking hideously like an insane watching
eye which strives to
convey some strange message,
yet recalls nothing save that it once had
a message to convey.
Sometimes,
when it is cloudy,
I can sleep.
Well do I remember the night of the great
Aurora,
when over the swamp played the shocking corruscations
of the
daemon light.
After the beam came clouds,
and then I slept.
And it was under a horned waning moon that
I saw the city for
the first time.
Still and somnolent did it lie,
on a strange plateau in a hollow between strange
peaks.
Of ghastly marble were its walls and its towers,
its columns,
domes,
and pavements.
In the marble streets were marble pillars,
the upper parts of which were carven into
the images of grave
bearded men.
The air was warm and stirred not.
And overhead,
scarce ten degrees from the zenith,
glowed that watching Pole Star.
Long did I gaze on the city,
but the day came not.
When the red Aldebaran,
which blinked low in the sky but never set,
had crawled a quarter of the way around the
horizon,
I saw light and motion in the houses and the
streets.
Forms
strangely robed,
but at once noble and familiar,
walked abroad and under the horned waning
moon men talked
wisdom in a tongue which I understood,
though it was unlike any language which I
had ever known.
And when the red Aldebaran had crawled more
than half-way
around the horizon,
there were again darkness and silence.
When I awaked,
I was not as I had been.
Upon my memory was graven the vision of the
city,
and within my soul had arisen another and
vaguer recollection,
of whose nature I was not then certain.
Thereafter,
on the cloudy nights when I could not sleep,
I saw the city often;
sometimes under the hot,
yellow rays of a sun which did not set,
but which wheeled low in the horizon.
And on the clear nights the Pole Star leered
as never before.
Gradually I came to wonder what might be my
place in that city
on the strange plateau betwixt strange peaks.
At first content to view the scene as an all-observant
uncorporeal presence,
I now desired to define my relation to it,
and to speak my mind amongst the grave men
who conversed each
day in the public squares.
I said to myself,
"This is no dream,
for by what means can I prove the greater
reality of that
other life in the house of stone and brick
south of the
sinister swamp and the cemetery on the low
hillock,
where the Pole Star peeps into my north window
each night?"
One night as I listened to the discourses
in the large square
containing many statues,
I felt a change;
and perceived that I had at last a bodily
form.
Nor was I a stranger in the streets of Olathoe,
which lies on the plateau of Sarkia,
betwixt the peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek.
It was my friend Alos who spoke,
and his speech was one that pleased my soul,
for it was the speech of a true man and patriot.
That night had the news come of Daikos' fall,
and of the advance of the Inutos;
squat,
hellish yellow fiends who five years ago had
appeared out of
the unknown west to ravage the confines of
our kingdom,
and to besiege many of our towns.
Having taken the fortified places at the foot
of the mountains,
their way now lay open to the plateau,
unless every citizen could resist with the
strength of ten men.
For the squat creatures were mighty in the
arts of war,
and knew not the scruples of honour which
held back our tall,
grey-eyed men of Lomar from ruthless conquest.
Alos,
my friend,
was commander of all the forces on the plateau,
and in him lay the last hope of our country.
On this occasion he spoke of the perils to
be faced and
exhorted the men of Olathoe,
bravest of the Lomarians,
to sustain the traditions of their ancestors,
who when forced to move southward from Zobna
before the
advance of the great ice sheet (even as our
descendents must
some day flee from the land of Lomar) valiantly
and
victoriously swept aside the hairy,
long-armed,
cannibal Gnophkehs that stood in their way.
To me Alos denied the warriors part,
for I was feeble and given to strange faintings
when subjected
to stress and hardships.
But my eyes were the keenest in the city,
despite the long hours I gave each day to
the study of the
Pnakotic manuscripts and the wisdom of the
Zobnarian Fathers;
so my friend,
desiring not to doom me to inaction,
rewarded me with that duty which was second
to nothing in
importance.
To the watchtower of Thapnen he sent me,
there to serve as the eyes of our army.
Should the Inutos attempt to gain the citadel
by the narrow
pass behind the peak Noton and thereby surprise
the garrison,
I was to give the signal of fire which would
warn the waiting
soldiers and save the town from immediate
disaster.
Alone I mounted the tower,
for every man of stout body was needed in
the passes below.
My brain was sore dazed with excitement and
fatigue,
for I had not slept in many days;
yet was my purpose firm,
for I loved my native land of Lomar,
and the marble city Olathoe that lies betwixt
the peaks Noton
and Kadiphonek.
But as I stood in the tower's topmost chamber,
I beheld the horned waning moon,
red and sinister,
quivering through the vapours that hovered
over the distant
valley of Banof.
And through an opening in the roof glittered
the pale Pole Star,
fluttering as if alive,
and leering like a fiend and tempter.
Methought its spirit whispered evil counsel,
soothing me to traitorous somnolence with
a damnable
rhythmical promise which it repeated over
and over:
Slumber, watcher, till the spheres.
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv'd, and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o'er
Shall the past disturb thy door.
Vainly did I struggle with my drowsiness,
seeking to connect these strange words with
some lore of the
skies which I had learnt from the Pnakotic
manuscripts.
My head, heavy and reeling, drooped to my
breast,
and when next I looked up it was in a dream,
with the Pole Star grinning at me through
a window from over
the horrible and swaying trees of a dream
swamp.
And I am still dreaming.
In my shame and despair I sometimes scream
frantically,
begging the dream-creatures around me to waken
me ere the
Inutos steal up the pass behind the peak Noton
and take the
citadel by surprise;
but these creatures are daemons,
for they laugh at me and tell me I am not
dreaming.
They mock me whilst I sleep,
and whilst the squat yellow foe may be creeping
silently upon
us.
I have failed in my duties and betrayed the
marble city of
Olathoe;
I have proven false to Alos, my friend and
commander.
But still these shadows of my dreams deride
me.
They say there is no land of Lomar,
save in my nocturnal imaginings that in these
realms where the
Pole Star shines high,
and red Aldebaran crawls low around the horizon,
there has been naught save ice and snow for
thousands of years
of years,
and never a man save squat, yellow creatures,
blighted by the cold, called "Esquimaux."
And as I writhe in my guilty agony,
frantic to save the city whose peril every
moment grows,
and vainly striving to shake off this unnatural
dream of a
house of stone and brick south of a sinister
swamp and a
cemetery on a low hillock,
the Pole Star, evil and monstrous,
leers down from the black vault,
winking hideously like an insane watching
eye which strives to
convey some message,
yet recalls nothing save that it once had
a message to convey.
