I Was Five Years Old The First

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, Before I Learned, Did I Wonder Whence Came The Multitudes Of Pictures That Thronged My Dreams; For They Were Pictures The Like Of Which I Had Never Seen In Real Wake-a-day Life. They Tormented My Childhood, Making Of My Dreams A Procession Of Nightmares And A Little Later Convincing Me That I Was Different From My Kind, A Creature Unnatural And Accursed.

The Loneliness Of The Man Is Slowly Being Borne In Upon Me. There Is Not A Man Aboard But Hates Or Fears Him, Nor Is There A Man Whom He Does Not Despise.

A Vast Silence Reigned Over The Land. The Land Itself Was A Desolation, Lifeless, Without Movement, So Lone And Cold That The Spirit Of It Was Not Even That Of Sadness. There Was A Hint In It Of Laughter, But Of Laughter More Terrible Than Any Sadness-a Laughter That Was Mirthless As The Smile Of The Sphinx, A Laughter Cold As The Frost And Partaking Of The Grimness Of Infallibility. It Was The Masterful And Incommunicable Wisdom Of Eternity Laughing At The Futility Of Life And The Effort Of Life. It Was The Wild, The Savage, Frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

Bog-lights, Vapors Of Mysticism, Psychic Overtones, Soul Orgies, Wailings Among The Shadows, Weird Gnosticisms, Veils And Tissues Of Words, Gibbering Subjectivisms, Gropings And Maunderings, Ontological Fantasies ... This Is The Stuff, The Phantasms Of Hope, That Fills Your Book Shelves. Look At Them, All The Sad Wraiths Of Sad Mad Men And Passionate Rebels — Your Schopenhauers, Your Strindbergs, Your Tolstois And Nietzsches. Come. Your Glass Is Empty. Fill And Forget.

Not All The Monsters Have Fangs.