Lovecraft, H P & Barlow, R H - Till A' The Seas

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Till A’ the Seas

by H. P. Lovecraft and R. H Barlow

Written Jan 1935

Published Summer 1935 in The Californian, 3, No. 1, 3-7.

Upon an eroded cliff-top rested the man, gazing far across the valley. Lying thus, he

could see a great distance, but in all the sere expanse there was no visible motion.

Nothing stirred the dusty plain, the disintegrated sand of long-dry river-beds, where once

coursed the gushing streams of Earth’s youth. There was little greenery in this ultimate

world, this final stage of mankind’s prolonged presence upon the planet. For unnumbered

aeons the drought and sandstorms had ravaged all the lands. The trees and bushes had

given way to small, twisted shrubs that persisted long through their sturdiness; but these,

in turn, perished before the onslaught of coarse grasses and stringy, tough vegetation of

strange evolution.

The ever-present heat, as Earth drew nearer to the sun, withered and killed with pitiless

rays. It had not come at once; long aeons had gone before any could feel the change. And

all through those first ages man’s adaptable form had followed the slow mutation and

modelled itself to fit the more and more torrid air. then the day had come when men

could bear their hot cities but ill, and a gradual recession began, slow yet deliberate.

Those towns and settlements closest to the equator had been first, of course, but later

there were others. Man, softened and exhausted, could cope no longer with the ruthlessly

mounting heat. It seared him as he was, and evolution was too slow to mould new

resistances in him.

Yet not at first were the great cities of the equator left to the spider and the scorpion. In

the early years there were many who stayed on, devising curious shields and armours

against the heat and the deadly dryness. These fearless souls, screening certain buildings

against the encroaching sun, made miniature worlds of marvellously ingenious things, so

that for a while men persisted in the rusting towers, hoping thereby to cling to old lands

till the searing should be over. For many would not believe what the astronomers said,

and looked for a coming of the mild olden world again. But one day the men of Dath,

from the new city of Niyara, made signals to Yuanario, their immemorially ancient

capital, and gained no answer from the few who remained therein. And when explorers

reached that millennial city of bridge-linked towers they found only silence. There was

not even the horror of corruption, for the scavenger lizards had been swift.

Only then did the people fully realize that these cities were lost to them; know that they

must forever abandon them to nature. The other colonists in the hot lands fled from their

brave posts, and total silence reigned within the high basalt walls of a thousand empty

towns. Of the denser throngs and multitudinous activities of the past, nothing finally

Till A’ the Seas

remained. There now loomed against the rainless deserts only the blistered towers of

vacant houses, factories, and structures of every sort, reflecting the sun’s dazzling

radiance and parching in the more and more intolerable heat.

Many lands, however, had still escaped the scorching blight, so that the refugees were

soon absorbed in the life of a newer world. During strangely prosperous centuries the

hoary deserted cities of the equator grew half-forgotten and entwined with fantastic

fables. Few thought of those spectral, rotting towers…those huddles of shabby walls and

cactus-choked streets, darkly silent and abandoned…

Wars came, sinful and prolonged, but the times of peace were greater. Yet always the

swollen sun increased its radiance as Earth drew closer to its fiery parent. It was as if the

planet meant to return to that source whence it was snatched, aeons ago, through the

accidents of cosmic growth.

After a time the blight crept outward from the central belt. Southern Yarat burned as a

tenantless desert - and then the north. In Perath and Baling, those ancient cities where

brooding centuries dwelt, there moved only the scaly shapes of the serpent and the

salamander, and at last Loron echoed only to the fitful falling of tottering spires and

crumbling domes.

Steady, universal, and inexorable was the great eviction of man from the realms he had

always known. No land within the widening stricken belt was spared; no people left

unrouted. It was an epic, a titan tragedy whose plot was unrevealed to the actors - this

wholesale desertion of the cities of men. It took not years or even centuries, but millennia

of ruthless change. And still it kept on - sullen, inevitable, savagely devastating.

Agriculture was at a standstill, the world fast became too arid for crops. This was

remedied by artificial substitutes, soon universally used. And as the old places that had

known the great things of mortals were left, the loot salvaged by the fugitives grew

smaller and smaller. Things of the greatest value and importance were left in dead

museums - lost amid the centuries - and in the end the heritage of the immemorial past

was abandoned. A degeneracy both physical and cultural set in with the insidious heat.

For man had so long dwelt in comfort and security that this exodus from past scenes was

difficult. Nor were these events received phlegmatically; their very slowness was

terrifying. Degradation and debauchery were soon common; government was

disorganized, and the civilization aimlessly slid back toward barbarism.

When, forty-nine centuries after the blight from the equatorial belt, the whole western

hemisphere was left unpeopled, chaos was complete. There was no trace of order or

decency in the last scenes of this titanic, wildly impressive migration. Madness and

frenzy stalked through them, and fanatics screamed of an Armageddon close at hand.

Mankind was now a pitiful remnant of the elder races, a fugitive not only from the

prevailing conditions, but from his own degeneracy. Into the northland and the antarctic

went those who could; the rest lingered for years in an incredible saturnalia, vaguely

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摘要：

TillA’theSeasTillA’theSeasbyH.P.LovecraftandR.HBarlowWrittenJan1935PublishedSummer1935inTheCalifornian,3,No.1,3-7.IUponanerodedcliff-toprestedtheman,gazingfaracrossthevalley.Lyingthus,hecouldseeagreatdistance,butinallthesereexpansetherewasnovisiblemotion.Nothingstirredthedustyplain,thedisintegrateds...

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Lovecraft, H P & Barlow, R H - Till A' The Seas

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