by William Lumley
Oh, have you seen the Elder Thing
That creeps upon the hill--
A fearsome Thing with lurid eyes
At night when all is still;
A horror wrought of withered moss
And foul primordial slime,
Wherein there fester monstrously
The evils of all time?
With phosphorescent glow like naught
That Nature might devise,
All the fell ancient lore of earth
Gleams hellish in its eyes.
As night by night this Elder Thing
Upon the hill doth creep,
Awakened by men's blasphemies
From out its age-long sleep.
By monolith and haunted fen
Down to the mandrake mere
It prowls to meet the sheeted dead
That squeak and gibber there;
And nameless things, not beasts nor men,
With bat-like creatures vie,
And loathsome reptiles writhe and hiss
Till daybreak pales the sky.
A thousand shapes the Things--
A thousand shapes or none--
All forms of Fear since Earth was born
It mirrors as its own;
It apes each rhythmic Elder Sign
As it doth onward creep,
Awakened by man's blasphemies
From out its age-long sleep.
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