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IFA Review, August 1940
Page 4
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FREDEREICK SHROYER's NIGHT THOUGHTS There are long shadowy corridors that lead ever down into bottomless abysses, Covered with dust, rough-hewn steps spiral down and down into the flux of alien dimensions. Too close to man at night, too near to him in delirium, mingled within him in madness are the amorphous creatures that ever lie just beyond the border line of life. Behind the lips of carmine, beneath the dew-strewn eyes of a loved one hides a skull, and the warm caresses in a scented bed change soon to a cold embrace in a narrow, velveted couch, and the mistress is the worm. Black and wavering shadows rise slowly to the surface of stagnant tarns when midnight tolls and tolling, calls to life that which has long been dead. How thin the veil that seperates life and death, woven of fears and dreams. How oft this veil is rent, sufficient for a long ebon tentacle, spawn of madness and chaos, to coil thru and draw a gibbering mad-man into the gloom of this awful and eternal land. In dreams I have travelled far beyond this earth, even unto a silent sombre city that lies on the edge of a black and silent sea. Here no sun illumes the fogged skies, no stars wander through the heavens, no wind sighs O'er the scorariac plains. All is silent; all is dead and forgotten. Oft have I wandered down the narrow, winding alleys of this outre city, peering in amazement at the little gargoyle and gods that crumble in leaningshrines, peering fearfully into the darkened doorways of the ancient buildings. Once I think I saw a little light flickering within the depths of a great pylon, but I am not certain---nor do I care to know. There are some things that are best unknown. I conversed with a shadow and he told me of a moon of Altair where lived a race of creatures, possessed of many arms, who worshipped a gigantic slug, and every time their star was occulted by the unner moon they cast one of their numbers into the pit where dwelt their god. No one, once cast into the pit, ever returned. But some of the more valiiant youths of this race have, on occasion, ventured to the brink of this pit in the darkness and have brought back tales of having seen the pale, drawn features of those who had been sacrificed, staring up at them from the depths, with their eyes wide and staring. I wonder where Poe drinks tonight. Perhaps he has found Baudlaire somewhere out beyond Orion, and together they reel down some medieval street to a little tavern where wine is cheap and potent, served by a full-bosomed wench who has a rendesvous with Villon tonight. Is there a ghoulish moon in the night skies of that world where all things coexist? Is Romeo impatiently fingering the moon-silvered ivy beneath a balcony, waiting for his incomparable Juliet? Where goes Falstaff in such a ponderous hurry? Ah, there's some villainy afoot, I'll wage you? Of what thinks an ancient clock as it chips away the hours from the wall of time with its ceaseless pendulum. Chip, chip, chip. Perhaps it also whets the scythe. It has beat time for the dance of the hours long before I was born and began to die, and still it taps me on my way to the pit.
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FREDEREICK SHROYER's NIGHT THOUGHTS There are long shadowy corridors that lead ever down into bottomless abysses, Covered with dust, rough-hewn steps spiral down and down into the flux of alien dimensions. Too close to man at night, too near to him in delirium, mingled within him in madness are the amorphous creatures that ever lie just beyond the border line of life. Behind the lips of carmine, beneath the dew-strewn eyes of a loved one hides a skull, and the warm caresses in a scented bed change soon to a cold embrace in a narrow, velveted couch, and the mistress is the worm. Black and wavering shadows rise slowly to the surface of stagnant tarns when midnight tolls and tolling, calls to life that which has long been dead. How thin the veil that seperates life and death, woven of fears and dreams. How oft this veil is rent, sufficient for a long ebon tentacle, spawn of madness and chaos, to coil thru and draw a gibbering mad-man into the gloom of this awful and eternal land. In dreams I have travelled far beyond this earth, even unto a silent sombre city that lies on the edge of a black and silent sea. Here no sun illumes the fogged skies, no stars wander through the heavens, no wind sighs O'er the scorariac plains. All is silent; all is dead and forgotten. Oft have I wandered down the narrow, winding alleys of this outre city, peering in amazement at the little gargoyle and gods that crumble in leaningshrines, peering fearfully into the darkened doorways of the ancient buildings. Once I think I saw a little light flickering within the depths of a great pylon, but I am not certain---nor do I care to know. There are some things that are best unknown. I conversed with a shadow and he told me of a moon of Altair where lived a race of creatures, possessed of many arms, who worshipped a gigantic slug, and every time their star was occulted by the unner moon they cast one of their numbers into the pit where dwelt their god. No one, once cast into the pit, ever returned. But some of the more valiiant youths of this race have, on occasion, ventured to the brink of this pit in the darkness and have brought back tales of having seen the pale, drawn features of those who had been sacrificed, staring up at them from the depths, with their eyes wide and staring. I wonder where Poe drinks tonight. Perhaps he has found Baudlaire somewhere out beyond Orion, and together they reel down some medieval street to a little tavern where wine is cheap and potent, served by a full-bosomed wench who has a rendesvous with Villon tonight. Is there a ghoulish moon in the night skies of that world where all things coexist? Is Romeo impatiently fingering the moon-silvered ivy beneath a balcony, waiting for his incomparable Juliet? Where goes Falstaff in such a ponderous hurry? Ah, there's some villainy afoot, I'll wage you? Of what thinks an ancient clock as it chips away the hours from the wall of time with its ceaseless pendulum. Chip, chip, chip. Perhaps it also whets the scythe. It has beat time for the dance of the hours long before I was born and began to die, and still it taps me on my way to the pit.
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