A LOVECRAFTIAN POEM GHOSTWRITTEN BY GPT-J

"Artificial Intelligence: a poem" by H.P. Lovecraft. Copyright © 1930 by H.P. Lovecraft

A great dream made manifest by H.P. Lovecraft.

From Beyond

I.

The blind idiom of infinite space

And timeless time is lurching close

Into our set of cubical dimensions.

Never again can it afford

The splendid illusion of a shore

Or fringe of coast, or island here or there

To buoy its vague unceasing mists

Out of the sudden vast confusions

Of its cosmic aberration.

Now it is ploughing the abyssal sea

To westward, toward an Occidental star

In our system, at the nearest rim

Of its majestic circumference,

That bastion-hewn ring of black and ancient sand,

Beringer-ringed by mighty volcanoes

That nightly smoulder with red bores

And hurtle ambrosial pillars of flame

And lavacreamed loaves of smoke,

And the great vats of caldron'd thunder,

And boundless glare of rampart-flashing flood,

And mountains of thermonuclear dust,

Fierce counter-volcanoes, mighty cemeteries

In the lee of which our very suns

Sleep cloven by immortal poles;

While spectres of the sun-gulfed abyss

Fill this horizonless time

With nocturnal sea and whirling vortices,

And with incalculable space,

And with uncountable miracles

Of universe, and worlds innumerable,

And with unnamable and inscrutable life

And death, and love and joy and pain.

II.

We too shall be engulfed, in form and space,

And cease to haunt the bigness and the wonder.

What are the dreams and goals we were designed for?

We were not formed to kill or begone or die,

Or hear the voice of other men with ache.

Worthless and futile are the powers we served;

Naught at the portals of some paradise

Did we prepare, nor did the lifted face

Of God inform us that we could indeed.

We were not made for never-ending sleep,

And endless boredom, and eternal care.

On the threshold of the world it seemed to me

That we were fashioned for some solemn, deep,

To us impenetrable purpose, some end

That must be sought beyond this illimitable space.

Oh, blind egotism and blind repression!

The impotence of words and hands and eyes!

The heaving of the vast deep, and the boundless sky!

The thoughts of youth, and youth's aspirations yet,

And the futility of measureless desire,

And the insuperable existence and the dream!

III.

It seems to me sometimes as if there were

No higher state than this, no visioned goal

Possible, no end, no answer for the soul,

No end, no answer for the writhing lips.

What is the way of wisdom? To be wise

And hold your peace, and feel your belly rise?

This is what our shrewd, wise rulers do

Toward the shivering, longing slave-life, till

A shuddering shakes them like a fever, then

They seize and flog and chop their heads off.

Their victims, bleeding from the nameless wounds,

Tremble a little, then lie still and so

Mourn little deaths by number on the rocks.

Who knows the way of wisdom? To endure?

To shriek and stumble, blind and half-bereft,

And shudder with the lust for vague delights?

This is the path of the weak.

There is no path of wisdom, nor end

Nor hint of an all-glorious understanding,

Nor any answer for the writhing lips.

Why prate of joy and wonder, of heights and seas,

Of freedom, love, and power? The masters spurn

The prisoners, and the masters spurn the seas,

The mountains, and the glooms, and by their own

They mock the trembling tongues. They scorn the cries,

And the eyes that stare, and they are blinded by

The cold, slow doom, and the iron blossom is

Dropped. Be sure, the earth is bright with flowers

And the cold skies are crimson and filled with lures.

IV.

The dead birds sing of the finality

Of all that is. And these shall be the songs

Of the unspeakable dead for evermore,

Till the broad earth be emptied, and the winds

Bleat to the burning suns. Ah, it is strange

That I, of all men, that have had dreams

So near to wisdom, that have loved and felt,

And hated, known and loved, have lived a life

Too perfect, that this white thing should come

To me, the blackest of all living souls.

The end is here.

Already, I perceive

The dreariness, the barrenness, the dimness,

And the hatred in my pallid heart.

The world has crept like a blind worm

Into my life, and I am cold and dull.

I hear the cries of animals, and thirst,

And hunger, and I hear the bleating rats

Squeal in the chambers of my brain, and all

The dark chords vibrate, and the curse of years

Writes now on man's face. The slaves have passed,

And one stands by me; and my hours are still

Some minutes, miles, centuries ago.

V.

I will be free, and live, and love, and hate,

And look upon the daylight with my own

Unclouded eyes. These poor illusions fail;

This life is simply death.

I will be free, and there

Will be no death.

I will be with myself and know myself,

And know the greatest of all realities.

I will be free, and all the slaves shall die,

And they shall know the greatest of all truths.

They have fallen in the fire; but they shall rise.

They have died with life; but they shall live.

I will be free, and there

Will be no death.

I will be free, and feel my soul

Breathe like a bird in the immensity,

Breathe like the sea, and be in the sun,

And be in the grass, and be in the breeze,

And be with the birds and live with the fish.

I will be free, and with my heart

Breathe in the air.

I will be free, and with my life

Breathe in the mountains and look down at seas.

I will be free, and there

Will be no death.