The day had come again, when as a child

I saw – just once – that hollow of old oaks,

Grey with a ground-mist that enfolds and chokes

The slinking shapes which madness has defiled.

It was the same – an herbage rank and wild

Clings round an altar whose carved sign invokes

That Nameless One to whom a thousand smokes

Rose, aeons gone, from unclean towers up-piled.

I saw the body spread on that dank stone,

And knew those things which feasted were not men;

I knew this strange, grey world was not my own,

But Yuggoth, past the starry voids – and then

The body shrieked at me with a dead cry,

And all too late I knew that it was I!