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FIREAXE LYRICS
"Lovecraftian Nightmares" (1999)
1. Beyond Zimbabwe
2. Nightmare Lake
3. The Ancient Track
4. The Outpost
5. Despair
6. Whispers in the Night
7. Hounds of Tindalos
8. Nemesis
9. Festival
10. Nathicana
1. Beyond Zimbabwe
The drums of the jungle in ecstasy boom,
And summon the chosen to torture and doom;
The quivering throngs wait expectant and sad,
While the shrieks of the priest echo drunkenly mad.
Round the altars are tributes of barley and cream,
And the acolytes stagger in opiate dream.
It is thus that the shadow grows mighty and whole,
As it feeds on the body and sucks at the soul.
- H. P. Lovecraft
2. Nightmare Lake
There is a lake in distant Zan,
Beyond the wonted haunts of man,
Where broods alone in a hideous state
A spirit dead and desolate.
A spirit ancient and unholy,
Heavy with fearsome melancholy,
Which from the waters dull and dense
Draws vapors cursed with pestilence.
Around the banks a mire of clay,
Crawl things offensive in decay,
And curious birds that reach the shore
Are seen by mortals nevermore.
Here shines by day the searing sun
On glassy wastes beheld by none,
And here by night pale moon beams flow
Into the deeps that yawn below.
In nightmares only it is told
What scenes beneath those beams unfold;
What scenes, too old for human sight,
Lie sunken there in endless night;
For in those depths there only pace
The shadows of a voiceless race.
One midnight, redolent of ill,
I saw that lake, asleep and still;
While in the lurid sky there rode
A gibbous moon that glow'd and glow'd.
I saw the stretching marshy shore
And the foul things those marshes bore:
Lizards and snakes convuls'd and dying;
Ravens and vampires putrefying;
All these and hov'ring o'er the dead,
Narcophagi that on them fed.
And as the dreadful moon climbed high,
Fright'ning the stars from out the sky,
I saw the lake's dull waters glow
Till sunken things appeared below.
There shown unnumbered fathoms down,
The towers of a forgotten town;
The tarnished domes and mossy walls;
Weed tangles spires and empty halls;
Deserted fanes and vaults of dread,
And streets of gold uncoveted.
These I beheld and saw beside
A horde of shapeless shadows glide;
A noxious horde which to my glance
Seem'd moving in a hideous dance
Round slimy sepulchres that lay
Beside a never travelled way.
Straight from the tombs a heaving rose
That vex'd the waters' dull repose,
While lethal shades of upper space
Howl'd at the moon's sardonic face.
Then sank the lake within its bed,
Sucked down to caverns of the dead,
Till from the reeking new-stript earth
Curl'd fetid fumes of noisome birth.
About the city, nigh uncover'd,
The monstrous dancing shadows hover'd,
When lo! There oped with a sudden stir
The portal of each sepulchre!
No ear may learn; no tongue may tell
What nameless horror then befell.
I see that lake - that moon agrin --
That city and the things within --
Waking, I pray that on that shore
The nightmare lake may sink no more!
- H. P. Lovecraft
3. The Ancient Track
There was no hand to hold me back
That night I found the ancient track
Over the hill and strained to see
The fields that teased my memory.
This tree that wall - I knew them well,
And all the roofs and orchards fell
Familiarly upon my mind
As from a past not far behind.
I knew what shadows would be cast
As the late moon came up at last
From back of Zaman's Hill, and how
The vale would shine three hours from now.
And when the path grew steep and high,
And seemed to end against the sky,
I had no fear of what might rest
Beyond that silhouetted crest.
Straight on I walked, while all the night
Grew pale with phosphorescent light,
And wall and farmhouse gable glowed
Unearthly by the climbing road.
There was the milestone that I knew -
"Two miles to Dunwich" - now the view
Of distant spire and roofs would dawn
With ten more upward paces gone...
The was no hand to hold me back
That night I found the ancient track,
And reached the crest to see outspread
A valley of the lost and dead;
And over Zaman's Hill the horn
Of a malignant moon was born,
To light the weeds and vines that grew
On ruined walls I never knew.
The fox-fire glowed in field and bog,
And unknown waters spewed a fog
Whose curling talons mocked the thought
That I had ever known this spot.
Too well I saw from the mad scene
That my loved past had never been -
Nor was I now upon the trail
Descending to that long dead vale.
Around was fog - ahead, the spray
Of star-streams in the Milky Way...
There was no hand to hold me back
That night I found the ancient track.
- H. P. Lovecraft
4. The Outpost
When evening cools the yellow stream,
And shadow stalks the jungle's ways,
Zimbabwe's palace flares ablaze
For the great king who fears to dream.
For he alone of all mankind
Waded the swamps that serpents shun;
And struggling toward the setting sun,
Came on the veldt that lies behind.
No other eyes had ventured there
Since eyes were lent for human sight --
But there as sunset turned to night,
He found the Elder Secret's lair.
Strange turrets rose beyond the plain,
And walls and bastions spread around
The distant domes that fouled the ground
Like leprous fungi after rain.
A grudging moon writhed up to shine
Past leagues where life can have no home;
And paling far off tower and dome,
Shewed each unwindowed and malign.
Then he who in his boyhood ran
Through vine-hung ruins free from fear,
Trembled at what he saw - for here
Was no dead ruined seat of man.
Inhuman shapes half seen, half guessed,
Half-solid and half ether-spawned,
Seethed down from starless voids that yawned
In heav'n, to these blank walls of pest.
And voidward from that pest-mad zone
Amorphous hordes seethed darkly back,
Their dim claws laden with the wrack
Of things that men have dreamed and known.
The ancient Fishers from Outside --
Were there not tales the high-priest told,
Of how they found the worlds of old,
And took what pelf their fancy spied?
Their hidden, dread-ringed outposts brood
Upon a million worlds of space;
Abhorred by every living race,
Yet scatheless in their solitude,
Sweating with fright the watcher crept
Back to the swamp that serpents shun,
So that he lay by rise of sun,
Safe in the palace where he slept.
None saw him leave or come at dawn,
Nor does his flesh bear any mark
Of what he met in that cursed dark --
Yet from his sleep all peace is gone.
When evening cools the yellow stream,
And shadow stalks the jungle's ways,
Zimbabwe's palace flares ablaze
For a great king who fears to dream.
- H. P. Lovecraft
5. Despair
O'er the midnight moorlands crying,
Thro' the cypress forests sighing,
In the night-wind madly flying,
Hellish forms with streaming hair;
In the barren branches creaking,
By the stagnant swamp pools speaking,
Past the shore cliffs ever shrieking,
Damn'd demons of despair.
Once, I think I half remember,
Ere the grey skies of November
Quenched my youth's aspiring ember,
Lived there such a thing as bliss;
Skies that now are dark were beaming,
Bold and azure, splendid seeming,
Till I learned it all was dreaming --
Deadly drowsiness of Dis.
But the stream of Time, swift flowing,
Brings the torment of half-knowing --
Dimly rushing, blindly going
Past the never trodden lea;
And the voyager, repining,
Sees the wicked death-fires shining,
Hears the wicked petrel's whining
As he helpless drifts to sea.
Evil wings in ether beating;
Vultures at the spirit eating;
Things unseen forever fleeting
Black against the leering sky.
Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,
Clawing fiends of future sadness,
Mingle in a cloud of madness
Ever on the soul to lie.
Thus the living, lone and sobbing,
In the throes of anguish throbbing,
With the loathsome Furies robbing
Night and noon of peace and rest.
But beyond the groans and grating
Of abhorrent Life is waiting
Sweet Oblivion, culminating
All the years of fruitless quest.
- H. P. Lovecraft
6. Whispers in the Night
Through years of intense meditation,
I yearned for the power, the sursurrations
The philosopher's riddles, locked in time,
That would unleash the shackles of my mind.
Upon a mountain, deep and wide,
It was there that I broke through the other side,
And it was within the darkened light
That I first heard those whispers in the night.
They came upon me one dark night,
The secrets of immortal delight.
Yet untrue was this bounty of gold,
For it had no life; it was so cold.
It was the lock, it was the key,
It was the thing that should not be.
I stared at dawn, its tresses bright,
Please rid me of those whispers in the night.
At first I resisted those evil cries,
But there was beauty in those sighs.
Soon I learned that no logic, no deduction,
Could save me from its twisted seduction,
For it held the answer to the unknown,
Of things long dead and those ungrown.
And so I thought that I just might,
Listen to those whispers in the night.
One saving grace would make me blind,
But the lampreys would on me not dine,
For a void thrall stood strong in its grue,
And issued forth: "The worship pylon is not for you."
And so it was that I joined the hive,
And in so doing let out this cry:
"Bring it forth, with all its might,
So I may listen to those whispers in the night."
© Octavio Ramos, 1998.
7. Hounds of Tindalos
The numbers scream into my head again and again,
Their sacrilege breeds from my sin,
The drug has yet to take its toll,
As it courses through my abhorred soul.
I unraveled this complex geometry,
Bringing forth a blasphemy,
Creatures emerge from a starry well,
Monsters bred in pits from hell.
Yet nothing forms but pain and fear,
I cannot see; I cannot hear,
How can the formula be so hard to see?
How can creatures be material that cannot be?
They come, In angles,
Their screeches rip through time,
They come, Through angles,
Their bodies lofty and sublime,
They come, Against angles,
Twisting and ripping through space,
They come, 'round angles,
There can be no escape.
The narcotic-induced calculations
Have led me to these abominations,
Creatures vile and wet and free,
Their souls driven to devour me.
I see them now, those masterless hounds,
Entropy created and twisted 'round,
As ions twist and atoms scatter,
Energy is pounded into matter.
Calculations and logic will not satiate the beasts,
They want emotion as part of their feast,
Forget my mind, they want my heart,
And to get it they must tear my soul apart.
They come, In angles,
Their screeches rip through time,
They come, Through angles,
Their bodies lofty and sublime,
They come, Against angles,
Twisting and ripping through space,
They come, 'round angles,
There can be no escape.
© Octavio Ramos, 1998.
8. Nemesis
Thro' 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 whirl'd 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 luster or name.
I have drifted o'er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies,
Where the many-fork'd lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible demons, that out of the green waters rise.
I have plung'd like a deer through the arches,
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel a 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 frog-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 writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.
I have peer'd from the casement in wonder,
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof'd 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-deck'd 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 that 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.
Thro' 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.
- H. P. Lovecraft
9. Festival
There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallowed and old.
There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun's turning flight,
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.
To no gale of earth's kind
Sway the forests of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwin'd
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid folk.
And mayest thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world shewing dimly the sign of the beast.
- H. P. Lovecraft
10. Nathicana
It was in the pale garden of Zais,
The mist shrouded garden of Zais,
Where blossoms the white nephalote,
The redolent herald of midnight.
There slumber the still lakes of crystal,
And streamlets that flow without murm'ring;
Smooth streamlets from caverns of Kathos
Where brood the calm spirits of twilight.
And over the lakes and the streamlets
Are bridges of pure alabaster,
White bridges all cunningly carven
With figures of fairies and daemons.
Here glimmer strange suns and strange planets,
And strange is the crescent Banapis
That sets 'yond the ivy-grown ramparts
Where thicken the dust of the evening.
Here fall the white vapors of Yabon;
The thought-blotting vapors of Yabon;
And here in the swirl of the vapors
I saw the divine Nathicana;
The garlanded, white Nathicana;
The slender, black-hair'd Nathicana;
The sloe-ey'd, red lipp'd Nathicana;
The silver-voic'd sweet Nathicana;
The pale-robe'd, belov'd Nathicana.
And ever was she my beloved,
From ages when time was unfashion'd;
From days when the stars were not fashion'd
Nor anything fashion'd but Yabon.
and here dwelt we ever and ever,
The innocent children of Zais,
At peace in the paths and the arbors,
White crowned with the blest nephalote.
How oft would we float in the twilight
O'er flow'r-cover'd pastures and hillsides
All white with the lowly astalthon;
The lowly yet lovely astalthon,
And dream in a world made of dreaming
The dreams that are fairer than Aidenn;
Bright dreams that are truer than reason!
So dreamed and so loved we through ages,
Till came the cursed season of Dzannin;
The daemon-damn'd season of Dzannin;
When red shown the suns and the planets,
And red gleam'd the crescent Banapis,
And red fell the vapors of Yabon.
Then redden'd the blossoms and streamlets,
And lakes that lay under the bridges,
And even the calm alabaster
Glowed pink with uncanny reflections
Till all the carved fairies and daemons
Leer'd redly from backgrounds of shadow.
Now redden'd my vision and madly
I strove to peer through the dense curtain
And glimpse the divine Nathicana;
The pure, ever-pale Nathicana;
The lov'd, the unchang'd Nathicana.
But vortex on vortex of madness
Beclouded my laboring vision;
My damnable, reddening vision
Which built a new world for my seeing;
A new world of redness and darkness,
A horrible coma call'd living.
So now in this coma call'd living
I view the bright phantoms of beauty;
The false, hollow phantoms of beauty
That cloak all the evils of Dzannin.
I view them with infinite longing,
So like do they seem to my lov'd one;
Yet foul from their eyes shines their evil;
Their cruel and pitiless evil,
More evil than Thaphron or Latgoz,
Twice ill for its gorgeous concealment.
And only in slumbers of midnight
Appears the lost maid Naticana,
The pallid, the pure Nathicana,
Who fades at the glance of the dreamer.
Again and again do I seek her;
I woo with deep draughts of Plathotis,
Deep draughts brew'd in wine of Astarte
And strengthened with tears of long weeping.
I yearn for the gardens of Zais;
The lovely lost gardens of Zais
Where blossoms the white nephalote,
The redolent herald of midnight.
The last potent draught I am brewing;
A draught that the daemons delight in;
A draught that will banish the redness;
The horrible coma call'd living.
Soon, soon, if I fail not in brewing,
The redness and madness will vanish,
And deep in the worm-peopled darkness
Will rot these base chains that have bound me.
Once more shall the gardens of Zais
Dawn white on my long tortured vision,
And there midst the vapors of Yabon
Will stand the divine Nathicana;
The slender, black-hair'd Nathicana;
The sloe-ey'd, red lipp'd Nathicana;
The silver-voic'd sweet Nathicana;
The pale-robe'd, belov'd Nathicana.
The deathless, restor'd Nathicana
Whose like is not met with in living.
- H. P. Lovecraft
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