The Elder Pharos (1931)

XXVII. The Elder Pharos

From Leng, where rocky peaks climb bleak and bare

Under cold stars obscure to human sight,

There shoots at dusk a single beam of light

Whose far blue rays make shepherds whine in prayer.

They say (though none has been there) that it comes

Out of a pharos in a tower of stone,

Where the last Elder One lives on alone,

Talking to Chaos with the beat of drums.

The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken mask

Of yellow, whose queer folds appear to hide

A face not of this earth, though none dares ask

Just what those features are, which bulge inside.

Many, in man’s first youth, sought out that glow,

But what they found, no one will ever know.