To Mr. Finlay, Upon His Drawing For Mr. Bloch's Tale "The Faceless God" (1936)

I could easily scrawl a sonnet to one of your masterpieces if you weren’t too particular about quality. For example -

In dim abysses pulse the shapes of night,

Hungry and hideous, with strange mitres crown'd;

Black pinions beating in fantastic flight

From orb to orb thro' sunless voids profound.

None dares to name the cosmos whence they course,

Or guess the look on each amorphous face,

Or speak the words that with resistless force

Would draw them from the hells of outer space.

Yet here upon a page our frighten'd glance

Finds monstrous forms no human eye should see;

Hints of those blasphemies whose countenance

Spreads death and madness thro' infinity.

What limner he who braves black gulfs alone

And lives to make their alien horrors known?

"Well well – quite in the Yuggoth tradition! I’ll have to keep a copy of this to try on one or another of the fan magazines!