Celebration of Lovecraft's Friends: W Paul Cook & Walter John Coates

I just received and am holding in my lap, the book printed in 1927: Land of Allen and other verse by Walter John Coates. The book is still sturdy after 80 years. The paper is heavy and edge cut irregularly. Some pages are cuth straight, others are ragged due to the orientation of the sheets printed. It smells of a bit of mildew - not overwhelming, but of age and history that it has endured but will not speak of.

Once a living man wrote the words within. Once a living man printed the pages. These collegaues created something and now it has passed to one who reveres it but is not worthy to hold it.

Coates dediactes it, "To the wife who has been my faithful companion for twenty years and to the friends who have kindled my idealism at the altar of poesy." One selected poem reads:

The Loved Immortals

Our spirits coexist with theirs. No bar
__Impassable those kindred souls may sever
__When God ordained of old to be together
As he ordained the orbit of each star
__Whoso wrought out mentality for eath
Wrought none impersonal or ill: the ages
__Are but successive epochs of rebirth
In which mankind (connoting fools and sages)
__In one great Likeness live this life below.
__The heights we climb, however fast or slow,
Were climbed before or will be climbed in time
__By kindred spirits in the grand relay
Of aging destiny. Full life sublime
__Is ours who live life fully, even today.

May 7, 1926