The Anglish Moot
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What the Moon Brings is an English tongue short tale by Americkish writer H. P. Lovecraft; it was written in 1922, and as such is in Folkish Holding (Public Domain) in the Banded Folkdoms.

The Tale (in Anglish)

I hate the moon - I am frightened of it - for when it shine on some scapes known and loved it sometimes makes them unknown and dreadful.


It was in the ghostly summer when the moon shone down on the old greenyard where I wandered; The ghostly summer of benumbing blossoms and wet seas of leavery that bring wild and many-hued dreams. And as I walked by the shallow bright stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if those soothed waters were drawn on in struggleless undertows to odd seas that are not in the world. Still and sparkling, bright and baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the umbowered banks white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in the deadening night-wind and dropped hopelessly into the stream, swirling away frightfully under the bowed, carved bridge, and staring back with the threatening scape of soothed, dead leers (faces).


And as I ran along the shore, pounding sleeping blossoms with heedless feet and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the bait of the dead leers, I saw that the greenyard had no end under that moon; for where by day the walls were, there stretched now only new outlooks of trees and paths, blossoms and shrubs, stone carvings and pagodas, and bendings of the yellow-litten stream beyond grassy banks and under foul bridges of shinestone (marble). And the lips of the dead lotos-leers whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I stopped my steps till the stream became a flood (river), and banded amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the shore of an endless and nameless sea.


Upon that sea the hateful moon shone, and over its readeless (voiceless) waves weird smells breeded. And as I saw therein the lotos-leers unsighten (disappear), I longed for nets that I might grab them and learn from them the untold which the moon had brought upon the night. But when that moon went over to the west and the still tide ebbed from the sulky shore, I saw in the light old spires that the waves had almost unwreened (uncovered), and white siles (columns) gay with streamers of green seaweed. And knowing that to this sunken place all the dead had come, I shuddered and did not wish again to speak with the lotos-leers.


Yet when I saw afar in the sea a black condor come down from the sky to seek rest on a great reef, I would gladly have frained (questioned) him, and asked him of those whom I had known when they were alive. This I would have asked him had he not been so far away, but he was truly far, and could not be seen at all when he drew nigh that big reef.


So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming the spires, the keeps, and the roofs of that dead, dripping town. And as I watched, my nostrils tried to shut against the smell-overcoming stench of the world's dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the flesh of the churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms to gnaw and sate upon.


Over these dreads the evil moon now hung truly low, but the puffy worms of the sea need no moon to feed by. And as I watched the ripples that told of the writhing of worms beneath, I felt a new chill from afar out whither the condor had flown, as if my flesh had nabbed a dread before my eyes had seen it.


Nor had my flesh shuddered without ground, for when I raised my eyes I saw that the waters had ebbed truly low, shewing much of the great reed whose rim I had seen before. And when I saw that the reef was but the black heapstone (basalt) wreath of a jolting carving whose fiendish forehead now shown in the dim moonlight and whose evil hooves must handle the hellish ooze far below, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden leer rise above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after slinking away of that leering and threatening yellow moon.


And to flee this untiring thing I leaped gladly and without thinking into the stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and sunken roads fat sea-worms suppered upon the world's dead.

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