The Ancient Track by H. P. Lovecraft (Poem)

“The Ancient Track” was first published in the March 1930 issue of Weird Tales. In 1943, 6 years after Lovecraft’s death, Arkham House republished “The Ancient Track” in Beyond the Walls of Sleep, an anthology of the author’s poetry and short stories. Many similar anthologies followed, some of them published by Arkham House, other by alternative publishers such as Ballantine Books and Hippocampus Press.

 

About H.P. Lovecraft

Best known for creating the Cthulhu Mythos, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of speculative fiction, much of which falls in the subgenre of weird fiction. During his lifetime Lovecraft’s work received only limited recognition, but gradually caught on and he is now considered to be one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century.

Lovecraft was a great fan of Edgar Allan Poe, who he once described as his “God of Fiction.” He began reading Poe’s work when he was just eight years old becoming significantly influenced by his prose and style of writing. Later influences include Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood.

Lovecraft’s work has inspired many prominent modern-day horror writers including Ramsay Campbell, Brian Lumley, and Stephen King,

 

The Ancient Track

by H. P. Lovecraft

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
When 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. . . .

There 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.

~~~