I am the throne in the foot
I am the blur in the sight
I am the worm at the root
I am the thief in the night

I am the rat in the wall
The lepper that leers at the gate
I am the ghost in the hall
Herald of horror and hate

I am the rust on the corn
I am the smut on the wheat
Laughing man's labor to scorn
Weaving a web for his feet

I am canker and mildew and blight
Danger and death and decay
The rot of the rain by night
The blast of the sun by day

I warp and wither with drouth
I work in the swamp's foul yeast
I bring the black plague from the south
And the leprosy in from the east.

I rend the flowers from the hemlock boughs
Wine stepped in the petals of dooms
Where the fat black repents drowse
I gather the upas blooms

I have plumbed the northern ice
For a spell like frozen lead
In lost grey fields of rice
I have learned from mongol dead.

Where a bleak black mountain stands
I have looted grisly caves
I have digged in the desert sands
To plunder terrible graves

Never the sun goes forth
Never the moon glows red
But out of the south or the north
I come with the slavering dead

I come with hideous spells
Black chants and ghastly tunes
I have looted the hidden hells
And plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest
To cheer me by word or look
There was never a man or beast
In the blood-black ways I took

There were crimson gulfs unplumbed
There were black wings over a sea
There were pits where mad things drummed
And foaming blasphemy

There were cast ungodly tombs
Where slimy monsters dreamed
There were clouds like blood-drenched plumes
Where unborn demons screamed

There were ages dead to time
And lands lost out of space
There were adders in the slime
And a dim unholy face

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone
And the brain froze in my skull
But I won through, I alone
And poured my chalice full

Of horrors and dooms and spells
Black buds and bitter roots
From the hells beneath the hells
I bring you my deathly fruits.