The Wood by H. P. Lovecraft (Poem)

“The Wood” was first published in the September 1938 issue of Weird Tales. It has since been included in several collections of H. P. Lovecraft’s work including The World of H. P. Lovecraft (1971), The Fantastic Poetry (1990), and The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft (2001).

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 Wood

by H. P. Lovecraft

They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles
Of forest night had hid eternal things,
They scal’d the sky with tow’rs and marble piles
To make a city for their revellings.

White and amazing to the lands around
That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose;
Crystal and ivory, sublimely crown’d
With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows.

And through its halls the pipe and #sistrum rang,
While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains;
Never a voice of elder marvels sang,
Nor any eye call’d up the hills and plains.

Thus down the years, till on one purple night
A drunken minstrel in his careless verse
Spoke the vile words that should not see the light,
And stirr’d the shadows of an ancient curse.

Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield;
So on the spot where that proud city stood,
The shuddering dawn no single stone reveal’d,
But fled the blackness of a primal wood.

~~~