Out of SPACE—Out of TIME

"From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—Out of TIME."

When I was a little kid I was obsessed with books about space. I loved picture books with diagrams, charts and maps. We had a huge atlas, so heavily cumbersome that we kept it under the couch. It had all types of terrestrial maps, but it also had star maps and maps of the solar system. I would spread it out on the living room floor and get lost in the pictures of distant worlds. Cleveland was as alien as Neptune to my 8 year old mind.

At some point I acquired a book about space travel, NASA and the like. I remember this quote. It was in the prologue. It resonated in such a way that my mind has reached back to it at random intervals since.

"From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—Out of TIME."

At the time I could only loosely grasp the meaning. But it echoed.

Through space.

                                   Through time.


Tonight I’m reading Joseph Campbell. He’s discussing comparative mythology, belief and the sublime. The ineffable, quintessence. Sublime. Echoes. Why does that quote still ring. The book is long gone. The quote is in my head. Is it Blake? Yeats? Google: “sublime through space time" aha: it’s Poe. Edgar Allan Poe. Twisted genius way too tapped into his own inner world to be able to handle this one.

A time capsule. A gift from a younger me. Time and space just folded over and I beheld some new dimension.

Sublime
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178357

Dream-Land

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

By a route obscure and lonely,   

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,   

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly   

From an ultimate dim Thule—

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

       Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,   

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,   

With forms that no man can discover   

For the tears that drip all over;   

Mountains toppling evermore   

Into seas without a shore;   

Seas that restlessly aspire,   

Surging, unto skies of fire;   

Lakes that endlessly outspread   

Their lone waters—lone and dead,—   

Their still waters—still and chilly   

With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead,—

Their sad waters, sad and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily,—

By the mountains—near the river   

Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—   

By the grey woods,—by the swamp   

Where the toad and the newt encamp,—   

By the dismal tarns and pools

   Where dwell the Ghouls,—   

By each spot the most unholy—   

In each nook most melancholy,—   

There the traveller meets, aghast,   

Sheeted Memories of the Past—   

Shrouded forms that start and sigh   

As they pass the wanderer by—   

White-robed forms of friends long given,   

In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion   

’T is a peaceful, soothing region—   

For the spirit that walks in shadow   

’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado!

But the traveller, travelling through it,   

May not—dare not openly view it;   

Never its mysteries are exposed   

To the weak human eye unclosed;   

So wills its King, who hath forbid   

The uplifting of the fring'd lid;   

And thus the sad Soul that here passes   

Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,   

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,   

I have wandered home but newly   

From this ultimate dim Thule.

Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946)