The Well of Night, Part 1

A breath I saw of foulest night congealed,
That stayed when dawn the blessed sun revealed,
A deep unbounded black, by aught unlit,
With strange malign awareness marked in it.
From distant lands and eons past it came,
Why then this gripping fear it knows my name?
     And as I watched it called my name.

Though dreams revealed, no dream it was, this thing,
Not made by man, but sought by priest and king.
A globe it seemed of blackest polished stone,
A tall man’s height, and shaped by hands unknown,
That, when awakened by unholy rite,
Became an unplumbed pit of darkest night,
     A window to eternal night.

I saw it first upon a hill that stood
Above thick mists, still pools, and rotted wood.
Beneath the moon did nightmare figures come
To worship what was hidden from the sun,
A race from elder myths whose world would end
A million years before the age of men,
     Forgotten by the race of men.

For wisdom and for power did they come,
And seek to bargain with the shadowed one,
And so it was that many of their own,
Not on, or in, but through the thing were thrown,
To dwindle in that vast and empty night,
Until the one that moved beyond their sight
     Approached, and took them from their sight.

Then came a night without a lighted moon,
With stars obscured and landscape lost in gloom,
Then lamps and torches did they bring for light,
To gird their sacrifice and evil rite,
Until a strangely chill and fetid blast,
Blew out the flames, and brought the dark at last,
     And brought unchallenged night at last.

The nameless stirred, and then unseen it came,
And through the thing it reached, their souls to claim,
Unearthly sounds escaped the b‘leaguered hill
But nothing more, and soon the night grew still,
And when the light of day returned, the door
Was shut, the hid’ous worshipers no more,
     And no one came there evermore.