AP Success - AP English Literature: Azathoth

When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the

minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall

towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of

the sun or of Spring’s flowering meads; when learning

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stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no

more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward

looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and

childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who

traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the

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world’s dreams had fled.    Of the name and abode of this

man little is written, for they were of the waking world

only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to

say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile

twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and

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turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window

opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court

where other windows stared in dull despair. From that

casement one might see only walls and windows, except

sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small

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stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must

soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the

dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and

peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the

waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to

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call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in

fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at

length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose

existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty

gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down

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to the lonely watcher’s window to merge with the close air

of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.

There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight

glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire,

swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from

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beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by

suns that the eye may never behold and having in their

whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable

depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and

wafted him away without touching the body that leaned

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stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in

men’s calendars the tides of far spheres that bore him

gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left

him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore

fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalates...