A couple of weeks ago I was trying to locate a half-remembered short story. My “google fu” is not what I thought, apparently, and the story remained unidentified until I reached home and had access to my own bookshelves. Here, I found the story in the first book I opened.
It was Lovecraft’s Poetry and the Gods. (Easily found online now I know precisely what I’m looking for.)
Skimming through the story, I find this lovely snipe at modern poetry:
vers libre, that pitiful compromise of the poet who overleaps prose yet falls short of the divine melody of numbers
There’s also the marvellously purple phrase from which I’ve taken the blog post title:
For poets are the dreams of Gods, and in each and every age someone hath sung unknowing the message and the promise from the lotos-gardens beyond the sunset.
I came across the rather garish waterlily bloom when I was looking for flower photos for another project; with those “lotos-gardens” in mind, it seemed an appropriate illustration.
Now that I have found the story, all I need to do is work out which poem it was that started me looking for it and why on earth I thought there was any connection. (Can I blame my appalling memory on too much lotus eating?)
don't confuse the narrator 