And Then Lovecraft Gets Cosmic
Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow’r
Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne
And looses the vast unknown.
This is where the poem really starts expanding beyond a simple Halloween ghost story.
Lovecraft introduces the idea of strange grey gods and a spectral power spreading sleep over the cosmic throne while unleashing the vast unknown.
There it is.
The vast unknown.
You knew it was coming.
This is classic Lovecraft territory.
The horror isn't limited to the village.
The horror isn't even limited to Earth.
The poem suddenly points toward something cosmic.
Something enormous.
Something that exists beyond ordinary human understanding.
That's one of the reasons Lovecraft's horror continues to resonate.
His monsters aren't always frightening because they are physically dangerous.
They're frightening because their existence suggests that the universe is much stranger than human beings would like to believe.
And perhaps considerably less interested in us than we'd like to believe.
