Meanwhile his [Whitehead’s] young friend & guest Allan Grayson of New York (who turns out to be a dental patient of Doc Long’s — Little Belknap’s father!) has formed a tremendous admiration for you & your work, & wants desperately to see your whole…” — Lovecraft to Derleth.
Apparently Lovecraft wrote a sonnet for Grayson, which is noted in the new Mariconda collection of essays. Can anyone supply me with a copy of the sonnet?
“To a Young Poet in Dunedin”
Many thanks. That title helps me to date it: “To a Young Poet in Dunedin [c. 29 May 1931]” but sadly it’s not online. I’ve finally succumbed and today ordered the second ed. of Lovecraft’s collected poems, so will hopefully have it in book form in a week or so.
I just looked at Joshi’s I Am Providence and clarified the Derleth letter. Lovecraft was staying in Dunedin with Grayson at the very same time, at Whitehead’s house. How curious that Lovecraft and Whitehead should write “The Trap” during the stay, and use “Grandison” as the name for the boy who is central to that story. So similar to ‘grandson’, but also to Grayson.
To a Young Poet in Dunedin
You haunt the lonely strand where herons hide,
And palm-framed sunsets open gates of flame;
Where marble moonbeams bridge the lapping tide
to westward shores of dream without a name.
Here, in a haze of half-remembering,
You catch faint sounds from that far, fabled beach.
The world is changed—your task henceforth to sing
Dim, beckoning wonders you could never reach.
– The Ancient Track (2001), 179
Many thanks. Is it just me, or is Lovecraft subtly implying a comparison between Grayson and the Ancient Egyptian Ra-Horus-of-the-sunset, with “sunsets open gates of flame”? One wonders how this connects to Henry St. Clair Whitehead, who was at Dundedin. Presumably Grayson went to stay with him.
Full essay on Grayson in my next Lovecraft in Historical Context book.