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
cemetary 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?"
