Hallowe’en in a Suburb

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  "title": "Hallowe’en in a Suburb",
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  "content_type": "poem",
  "language": "en",
  "summary": "This gothic, moonlit poem depicts a rural village reclaimed by spectral forces whose vampires, harpies and ghouls rise from graves beneath a pale, indifferent moon, transforming ordinary chimneys and steeples into hovels of the uncanny. Using recurring images of headstones, failing harvests and “rivers of madness,” it links decay and death to a cosmic, timeless power that renders past and present equally doomed—no change or progress can quicken the dead hour. The mood is bleak and elegiac, insisting on the inevitability and universality of death: the living’s ugliness and industry will one day join the unblest shades, buffeted by the “hounds of Time.” Overall the poem is a meditation on mortality and the supernatural leveling of human distinctions in the face of vast, unknowable forces.",
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    "The steeples are white in the wild moonlight, And the trees have a silver glare; Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly, And the harpies of upper air, That flutter and laugh and stare.",
    "For the village dead to the moon outspread Never shone in the sunset’s gleam, But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep Where the rivers of madness stream Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.",
    "A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves In the meadows that shimmer pale, And comes to twine where the headstones shine And the ghouls of the churchyard wail For harvests that fly and fail.",
    "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.",
    "So here again stretch the vale and plain That moons long-forgotten saw, And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray, Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw To shake all the world with awe.",
    "And all that the morn shall greet forlorn, The ugliness and the pest Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick, Shall some day be with the rest, And brood with the shades unblest.",
    "Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark, And the leprous spires ascend; For new and old alike in the fold Of horror and death are penn’d, For the hounds of Time to rend."
  ],
  "body_text": "The steeples are white in the wild moonlight, And the trees have a silver glare; Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly, And the harpies of upper air, That flutter and laugh and stare.\n\nFor the village dead to the moon outspread Never shone in the sunset’s gleam, But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep Where the rivers of madness stream Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.\n\nA chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves In the meadows that shimmer pale, And comes to twine where the headstones shine And the ghouls of the churchyard wail For harvests that fly and fail.\n\nNot 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.\n\nSo here again stretch the vale and plain That moons long-forgotten saw, And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray, Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw To shake all the world with awe.\n\nAnd all that the morn shall greet forlorn, The ugliness and the pest Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick, Shall some day be with the rest, And brood with the shades unblest.\n\nThen wild in the dark let the lemurs bark, And the leprous spires ascend; For new and old alike in the fold Of horror and death are penn’d, For the hounds of Time to rend.",
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      "title": "H. P. Lovecraft",
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