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 CONTENTS IN DETAIL

PRAISE FOR PYTHON CRASH COURSE

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION
Who Is This Book For?
What Can You Expect to Learn?
Online Resources
Why Python?

PART I: BASICS
CHAPTER 1: GETTING STARTED
Setting Up Your Programming Environment
Python Versions
Running Snippets of Python Code
About the VS Code Editor
Python on Different Operating Systems
Python on Windows
Python on macOS
Python on Linux
Running a Hello World Program
Installing the Python Extension for VS Code
Running hello_world.py
Troubleshooting
Running Python Programs from a Terminal
On Windows
On macOS and Linux
Exercise 1-1: python.org
Exercise 1-2: Hello World Typos
Exercise 1-3: Infinite Skills
Summary

CHAPTER 2: VARIABLES AND SIMPLE DATA TYPES

What Really Happens When You Run hello_world.py
Variables
Naming and Using Variables
Avoiding Name Errors When Using Variables
Variables Are Labels
Exercise 2-1: Simple Message
Exercise 2-2: Simple Messages
Strings
Changing Case in a String with Methods
Using Variables in Strings
Adding Whitespace to Strings with Tabs or Newlines
Stripping Whitespace
Removing Prefixes
Avoiding Syntax Errors with Strings
Exercise 2-3: Personal Message
Exercise 2-4: Name Cases
Exercise 2-5: Famous Quote
Exercise 2-6: Famous Quote 2
Exercise 2-7: Stripping Names
Exercise 2-8: File Extensions
Numbers
Integers
Floats
Integers and Floats
Underscores in Numbers
Multiple Assignment
Constants
Exercise 2-9: Number Eight
Exercise 2-10: Favorite Number
Comments
How Do You Write Comments?
What Kinds of Comments Should You Write?
Exercise 2-11: Adding Comments
The Zen of Python
Exercise 2-12: Zen of Python
Summary

CHAPTER 3: INTRODUCING LISTS

What Is a List?
Accessing Elements in a List
Index Positions Start at 0, Not 1
Using Individual Values from a List
Exercise 3-1: Names
Exercise 3-2: Greetings
Exercise 3-3: Your Own List
Modifying, Adding, and Removing Elements
Modifying Elements in a List
Adding Elements to a List
Removing Elements from a List
Exercise 3-4: Guest List
Exercise 3-5: Changing Guest List
Exercise 3-6: More Guests
Exercise 3-7: Shrinking Guest List
Organizing a List
Sorting a List Permanently with the sort() Method
Sorting a List Temporarily with the sorted() Function
Printing a List in Reverse Order
Finding the Length of a List
Exercise 3-8: Seeing the World
Exercise 3-9: Dinner Guests
Exercise 3-10: Every Function
Avoiding Index Errors When Working with Lists
Exercise 3-11: Intentional Error
Summary

CHAPTER 4: WORKING WITH LISTS

Looping Through an Entire List
A Closer Look at Looping
Doing More Work Within a for Loop
Doing Something After a for Loop
Avoiding Indentation Errors
Forgetting to Indent
Forgetting to Indent Additional Lines
Indenting Unnecessarily
Indenting Unnecessarily After the Loop
Forgetting the Colon
Exercise 4-1: Pizzas
Exercise 4-2: Animals
Making Numerical Lists
Using the range() Function
Using range() to Make a List of Numbers
Simple Statistics with a List of Numbers
List Comprehensions
Exercise 4-3: Counting to Twenty
Exercise 4-4: One Million
Exercise 4-5: Summing a Million
Exercise 4-6: Odd Numbers
Exercise 4-7: Threes
Exercise 4-8: Cubes
Exercise 4-9: Cube Comprehension
Working with Part of a List
Slicing a List
Looping Through a Slice
Copying a List
Exercise 4-10: Slices
Exercise 4-11: My Pizzas, Your Pizzas
Exercise 4-12: More Loops
Tuples
Defining a Tuple
Looping Through All Values in a Tuple
Writing Over a Tuple
Exercise 4-13: Buffet
Styling Your Code
The Style Guide
Indentation
Line Length
Blank Lines
Other Style Guidelines
Exercise 4-14: PEP 8
Exercise 4-15: Code Review
Summary

CHAPTER 5: IF STATEMENTS
A Simple Example
Conditional Tests
Checking for Equality
Ignoring Case When Checking for Equality
Checking for Inequality
Numerical Comparisons
Checking Multiple Conditions
Checking Whether a Value Is in a List
Checking Whether a Value Is Not in a List
Boolean Expressions
Exercise 5-1: Conditional Tests
Exercise 5-2: More Conditional Tests
if Statements
Simple if Statements
if-else Statements
The if-elif-else Chain
Using Multiple elif Blocks
Omitting the else Block
Testing Multiple Conditions
Exercise 5-3: Alien Colors #1
Exercise 5-4: Alien Colors #2
Exercise 5-5: Alien Colors #3
Exercise 5-6: Stages of Life
Exercise 5-7: Favorite Fruit
Using if Statements with Lists
Checking for Special Items
Checking That a List Is Not Empty
Using Multiple Lists
Exercise 5-8: Hello Admin
Exercise 5-9: No Users
Exercise 5-10: Checking Usernames
Exercise 5-11: Ordinal Numbers
Styling Your if Statements
Exercise 5-12: Styling if Statements
Exercise 5-13: Your Ideas
Summary
CHAPTER 6: DICTIONARIES
A Simple Dictionary
Working with Dictionaries
Accessing Values in a Dictionary
Adding New Key-Value Pairs
Starting with an Empty Dictionary
Modifying Values in a Dictionary
Removing Key-Value Pairs
A Dictionary of Similar Objects
Using get() to Access Values
Exercise 6-1: Person
Exercise 6-2: Favorite Numbers
Exercise 6-3: Glossary
Looping Through a Dictionary
Looping Through All Key-Value Pairs
Looping Through All the Keys in a Dictionary
Looping Through a Dictionary’s Keys in a Particular Order
Looping Through All Values in a Dictionary
Exercise 6-4: Glossary 2
Exercise 6-5: Rivers
Exercise 6-6: Polling
Nesting
A List of Dictionaries
A List in a Dictionary
A Dictionary in a Dictionary
Exercise 6-7: People
Exercise 6-8: Pets
Exercise 6-9: Favorite Places
Exercise 6-10: Favorite Numbers
Exercise 6-11: Cities
Exercise 6-12: Extensions
Summary

CHAPTER 7: USER INPUT AND WHILE LOOPS

How the input() Function Works
Writing Clear Prompts
Using int() to Accept Numerical Input
The Modulo Operator
Exercise 7-1: Rental Car
Exercise 7-2: Restaurant Seating
Exercise 7-3: Multiples of Ten
Introducing while Loops
The while Loop in Action
Letting the User Choose When to Quit
Using a Flag
Using break to Exit a Loop
Using continue in a Loop
Avoiding Infinite Loops
Exercise 7-4: Pizza Toppings
Exercise 7-5: Movie Tickets
Exercise 7-6: Three Exits
Exercise 7-7: Infinity
Using a while Loop with Lists and Dictionaries
Moving Items from One List to Another
Removing All Instances of Specific Values from a List
Filling a Dictionary with User Input
Exercise 7-8: Deli
Exercise 7-9: No Pastrami
Exercise 7-10: Dream Vacation
Summary

CHAPTER 8: FUNCTIONS
Defining a Function
Passing Information to a Function
Arguments and Parameters
Exercise 8-1: Message
Exercise 8-2: Favorite Book
Passing Arguments
Positional Arguments
Keyword Arguments
Default Values
Equivalent Function Calls
Avoiding Argument Errors
Exercise 8-3: T-Shirt
Exercise 8-4: Large Shirts
Exercise 8-5: Cities
Return Values
Returning a Simple Value
Making an Argument Optional
Returning a Dictionary
Using a Function with a while Loop
Exercise 8-6: City Names
Exercise 8-7: Album
Exercise 8-8: User Albums
Passing a List
Modifying a List in a Function
Preventing a Function from Modifying a List
Exercise 8-9: Messages
Exercise 8-10: Sending Messages
Exercise 8-11: Archived Messages
Passing an Arbitrary Number of Arguments
Mixing Positional and Arbitrary Arguments
Using Arbitrary Keyword Arguments
Exercise 8-12: Sandwiches
Exercise 8-13: User Profile
Exercise 8-14: Cars
Storing Your Functions in Modules
Importing an Entire Module
Importing Specific Functions
Using as to Give a Function an Alias
Using as to Give a Module an Alias
Importing All Functions in a Module
Styling Functions
Exercise 8-15: Printing Models
Exercise 8-16: Imports
Exercise 8-17: Styling Functions
Summary

CHAPTER 9: CLASSES
Creating and Using a Class
Creating the Dog Class
The __init__() Method
Making an Instance from a Class
Exercise 9-1: Restaurant
Exercise 9-2: Three Restaurants
Exercise 9-3: Users
Working with Classes and Instances
The Car Class
Setting a Default Value for an Attribute
Modifying Attribute Values
Exercise 9-4: Number Served
Exercise 9-5: Login Attempts
Inheritance
The __init__() Method for a Child Class
Defining Attributes and Methods for the Child Class
Overriding Methods from the Parent Class
Instances as Attributes
Modeling Real-World Objects
Exercise 9-6: Ice Cream Stand
Exercise 9-7: Admin
Exercise 9-8: Privileges
Exercise 9-9: Battery Upgrade
Importing Classes
Importing a Single Class
Storing Multiple Classes in a Module
Importing Multiple Classes from a Module
Importing an Entire Module
Importing All Classes from a Module
Importing a Module into a Module
Using Aliases
Finding Your Own Workflow
Exercise 9-10: Imported Restaurant
Exercise 9-11: Imported Admin
Exercise 9-12: Multiple Modules
The Python Standard Library
Exercise 9-13: Dice
Exercise 9-14: Lottery
Exercise 9-15: Lottery Analysis
Exercise 9-16: Python Module of the Week
Styling Classes
Summary

CHAPTER 10: FILES AND EXCEPTIONS

Reading from a File
Reading the Contents of a File
Relative and Absolute File Paths
Accessing a File’s Lines
Working with a File’s Contents
Large Files: One Million Digits
Is Your Birthday Contained in Pi?
Exercise 10-1: Learning Python
Exercise 10-2: Learning C
Exercise 10-3: Simpler Code
Writing to a File
Writing a Single Line
Writing Multiple Lines
Exercise 10-4: Guest
Exercise 10-5: Guest Book
Exceptions
Handling the ZeroDivisionError Exception
Using try-except Blocks
Using Exceptions to Prevent Crashes
The else Block
Handling the FileNotFoundError Exception
Analyzing Text
Working with Multiple Files
Failing Silently
Deciding Which Errors to Report
Exercise 10-6: Addition
Exercise 10-7: Addition Calculator
Exercise 10-8: Cats and Dogs
Exercise 10-9: Silent Cats and Dogs
Exercise 10-10: Common Words
Storing Data
Using json.dumps() and json.loads()
Saving and Reading User-Generated Data
Refactoring
Exercise 10-11: Favorite Number
Exercise 10-12: Favorite Number Remembered
Exercise 10-13: User Dictionary
Exercise 10-14: Verify User
Summary

CHAPTER 11: TESTING YOUR CODE

Installing pytest with pip
Updating pip
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 A DREAM OF LETHE
In the quest of her whom I had lost, I came at length to the shores
of Lethe, under the vault of an immense, empty, ebon sky, from
which all the stars had vanished one by one. Proceeding I knew not
whence, a pale, elusive light as of the waning moon, or the
phantasmal phosphorescence of a dead sun, lay dimly and without
lustre on the sable stream, and on the black, flowerless meadows.
By this light, I saw many wandering souls of men and women, who
came, hesitantly or in haste, to drink of the slow unmurmuring
waters. But among all these, there were none who departed in
haste, and many who stayed to watch, with unseeing eyes, the
calm and waveless movement of the stream. At length in the lily-
tall and gracile form, and the still, uplifted face of a woman who
stood apart from the rest, I saw the one whom I had sought; and,
hastening to her side, with a heart wherein old memories sang like
a nest of nightingales, was fain to take her by the hand. But in the
pale, immutable eyes, and wan, unmoving lips that were raised to
mine, I saw no light of memory, nor any tremor of recognition. And
knowing now that she had forgotten, I turned away despairingly,
and finding the river at my side, was suddenly aware of my ancient
thirst for its waters, a thirst I had once thought to satisfy at many
diverse springs, but in vain. Stooping hastily, I drank, and rising
again, perceived that the light had died or disappeared, and that all
the land was like the land of a dreamless slumber, wherein I could
no longer distinguish the faces of my companions. Nor was I able
to remember any longer why I had wished to drink of the waters of
oblivion.
 THE CARAVAN
My dreams are like a caravan that departed long ago, with tumult
of intrepid banners and spears, and the clamour of bugles and
brave adventurous songs, to seek the horizons of perilous untried
barbaric lands, and kingdoms immense and vaguely rumoured, with
cities beautiful and opulent as the cities of paradise, and deep
Edenic vales of palm and cinnamon and myrrh, lying beneath skies
of primeval azure silence. For traffic in the realms of mystery and
wonder, in the marts of scarce-imaginable cities and metropoli a
million leagues away, on the last horizon of romance, my dreams
departed, as a caravan with its laden camels. Since then, the years
are many, the days have flown as the flocks of southering
swallows; unnumbered moons have multiplied in fugitive silver,
uncounted suns in irretainable gold. But, alas, my dreams have not
returned. Have the swirling sands engulfed them, on a noon of
storm when the desert rose like a sea, and rolled its tawny billows
on the walled gardens of the green and fragrant lands? Or perished
they, devoured by the crimson demons of thirst, and the ghouls
and vultures? Or live they still, as captives in alien dungeons not to
be ascertained, or held by a wizard spell in palaces demon-built,
and cities baroque and splendid as the cities in a tale from the
Thousand and One Nights?
 THE PRINCESS ALMEENA
From her balcony of pearl the princess Almeena, clad in a gown of
irisated silk, with her long and sable locks unbound, gazes toward
the sunset-flooded sea beyond a terrace of green marble that
peacocks guard. Below, in the tinted light, fantastic trees whose
boles are serpentine, train a fine and hair-like foliage, mingling with
the moon-shaped leaves of enormous lilies. Rainbow-coloured
reeds cluster about the pools and fountains of black water, that are
rimmed with carven malachite. But these the princess does not
heed, but gazes upon the far-off seas, where the golden ichors of
the sun have gathered in a vast lake overflowing the horizon. Ere
long, a wind from the west, from islands where palm trees blossom
above the purple foam, brings in its breath the odour of unknown
flowers to mingle with the balms of the garden, and the sweet
suspiration of the princess—the princess who dreams, listening to
the wind, that her lover, the captain of the emperor’s most
redoubtable trireme of war, sailing the sky-blue seas beyond the
horizon and the sunset, has remembered her wild and royal
loveliness, and has breathed in his heart a secret sigh.
 ENNUI
In the alcove whose curtains are cloth-of-gold, and whose pillars
are fluted sapphire, reclines the emperor Chan, on his couch of
ebony set with opals and rubies, and cushioned with the furs of
unknown and gorgeous beasts. With implacable and weary gaze,
from beneath unmoving lids that seem carven of purple-veined
onyx, he stares at the crystal windows, giving upon the infinite fiery
azures of a tropic sky and sea. Oppressive as nightmare, a
formless, nameless fatigue, heavier than any burden the slaves of
the mines must bear, lies forever at his heart: All deliriums of love
and wine, the agonizing ecstasy of drugs, even the deepest and the
faintest pulse of delight or pain—all are proven, all are futile, for
the outworn but insatiate emperor. Even for a new grief, or a
subtler pang than any felt before, he thinks, lying on his bed of
ebony, that he would give the silver and vermilion of all his mines,
with the crowded caskets, the carcanets and crowns that lie in his
most immemorial treasure-vault. Vainly, with the verse of the most
inventive poets, the fanciful purple-threaded fabrics of the subtlest
looms, the unfamiliar gems and minerals from the uttermost land,
the pallid leaves and blood-like petals of a rare and venomous
blossom—vainly, with all these, and many stranger devices, wilder,
more wonderful diversions, the slaves and sultanas have sought to
alleviate the iron hours. One by one he has dismissed them with a
weary gesture. And now, in the silence of the heavily curtained
alcove, he lies alone, with the canker of ennui at his heart, like the
undying mordant worm at the heart of the dead.
Anon, from between the curtains at the head of his couch, a dark
and slender hand is slowly extended, clasping a dagger whose
blade reflects the gold of the curtain in a thin and stealthily
wavering gleam: Slowly, in silence, the dagger is poised, then rises
and falls like a splinter of lightning. The emperor cries out, as the
blade, piercing his loosely folded robe, wounds him slightly in the
side. In a moment the alcove is filled with armed attendants, who
seize and drag forth the would-be assassin—a slave girl, the
princess of a conquered people, who has often, but vainly, implored
her freedom from the emperor. Pale and panting with terror and
rage, she faces Chan and the guardsmen, while stories of
unimaginable monstrous tortures, of dooms unnameable, crowd
upon her memory. But Chan, aroused and startled only for the
instant, feels again the insuperable weariness, more strong than
anger or fear, and delays to give the expected signal. And then,
momentarily moved, perchance, by some ironical emotion, half-akin
to gratitude—gratitude for the brief but diverting danger, which has
served to alleviate his ennui for a little, he bids them free the
princess; and, with a regal courtesy, places about her throat his
own necklace of pearls and emeralds, each of which is the cost of
an army.
 THE STATUE OF SILENCE
I saw a statue, carven I knew not from what substance, nor with
what form or feature, because of the manifold drapery of black
which fell about it as a veil or a pall. Turning to Psyche, who was
with me, I said, “O thou who knowest by name and form the eidola
of all things, pray tell me what thing is this.” And she answered,
“The name of it is Silence, but neither god nor man nor demon
knoweth the form thereof, nor its entity. The seraphim pause often
before it, waiting the day when the shape shall be unveiled; and
the gods and demons of the universe are mute in its presence,
half-hoping, half-fearing the time when these lips shall speak, and
deliver forth one dreameth not what, of oracle, or query or
judgment, or doom.”
 REMOTENESS
There are days when all the beauty of the world is dim and
strange; when the sunlight about me seems to fall on a land
remoter than the poles of the moon. The roses in the garden
surprise me, like the monstrous orchids of unknown colour,
blossoming in planets beyond Aldebaran. And I am startled by the
yellow and purple leaves of October, as if the veil of some
tremendous and awful mystery were half-withdrawn for a moment.
In such hours as these, O heart of my heart, I fear to touch thee, I
avoid thy caresses, dreading that thou wilt vanish as a dream at
dawn; or that I shall find thee a phantom, the spectre of one who
died and was forgotten many thousand years ago, in a far-off land
on which the sun no longer shines.
 THE MEMNONS OF THE NIGHT
Ringed with a bronze horizon, which, at a point immensely remote,
seems welded with the blue brilliance of a sky of steel, they oppose
the black splendour of their porphyritic forms to the sun’s
insuperable gaze. Reared in the morning twilight of primeval time,
by a race whose towering tombs and cities are one with the dust of
their builders in the slow lapse of the desert, they abide to face the
terrible latter dawns, that move abroad in a starkness of fire,
consuming the veils of night on the vast and Sphinx-like
desolations. Level with the light, their tenebrific brows preserve a
pride as of Titan kings. In their lidless implacable eyes of staring
stone, is the petrified despair of those who have gazed too long on
the infinite.
Mute as the mountains from whose iron matrix they were hewn,
their mouths have never acknowledged the sovereignty of the suns,
that pass in triumphal flame from horizon unto horizon of the
prostrate land. Only at eve, when the west is like a brazen furnace,
and the far-off mountains smoulder like ruddy gold in the depth of
the heated heavens—only at eve, when the east grows infinite and
vague, and the shadows of the waste are one with the increasing
shadow of night—then, and then only, from the sullen throats of
stone, a music rings to the bronze horizon—a strong, a sombre
music, strange and sonorous, like the singing of black stars, or a
litany of gods that invoke oblivion; a music that thrills the desert to
its heart of adamant, and trembles in the granite of forgotten
tombs, till the last echoes of its jubilation, terrible as the trumpets
of doom, are one with the black silence of infinity.
 THE GARDEN AND THE TOMB
I know a garden of flowers—flowers lovely and multiform as the
orchids of far, exotic worlds—as the flowers of manifold petal,
whose colours change as if by enchantment in the alter nation of
the triple suns; flowers like tiger lilies from the garden of Satan;
like the paler lilies of paradise, or the amaranths on whose perfect
and immortal beauty the seraphim so often ponder; flowers fierce
and splendid like the crimson or golden flowers of fire; flowers
bright and cold as the crystal flowers of snow; flowers whereof
there is no likeness in any world of any sun; which have no symbol
in heaven or in hell.
Alas! in the heart of the garden is a tomb—a tomb so trellised and
embowered with vine and blossom, that the sunlight reveals the
ghastly gleam of its marble to no careless or incurious scrutiny. But
in the night, when all the flowers are still, and their perfumes are
faint as the breathing of children in slumber—then, and then only,
the serpents bred of corruption crawl from the tomb, and trail the
fetor and phosphorescence of their abiding-place from end to end
of the garden.
 IN COCAIGNE
It was a windless afternoon of April, beneath skies that were tender
as the smile of love, when we went forth, you and I, to seek the
fabulous and fortunate realm of Cocaigne. Past leafing oaks with
foliage of bronze and chrysolite, through zones of yellow and white
and red and purple flowers, like a landscape seen through a prism,
we fared with hopeful and tremulous hearts, forgetting all save the
dream we had cherished.*** At last we came to the lonely woods,
the pines with their depth of balmy, cool, compassionate shadow,
which are sacred to the genius of that land. There, for the first time
I was bold to take your hand in mine, and led you to a slope where
the woodland lilies, with petals of white and yellow ivory, gleamed
among the fallen needles. As in a dream, I found that my arms
were about you, as in a dream I kissed your yielding lips, and the
ardent pallor of your cheeks and throat. Motionless, you clung to
me, and a flush arose beneath my kisses like a delicate stain, and
lingered softly. Your eyes deepened to my gaze like the brown
pools of the forest at evening, and far within them, as in immensity
itself, trembled and shone the steadfast stars of your love. As a
ship that has wandered beneath stormy suns and disastrous
moons, but comes at last to the arms of the shielding harbour, my
head lay on the gentle heaving of your delicious breast, and I knew
that we had found Cocaigne.
 THE LITANY OF THE SEVEN KISSES
I
I kiss thy hands—thy hands, whose fingers are delicate and pale as
the petals of the white lotus.
II
I kiss thy hair, which has the lustre of black jewels, and is darker
than Lethe, flowing by midnight through the moonless slumber of
poppy-scented lands.
III
I kiss thy brow, which resembles the rising moon in a valley of
cedars.
IV
I kiss thy cheeks, where lingers a faint flush, like the reflection of a
rose upheld to an urn of alabaster.
V
I kiss thine eyelids, and liken them to the purple-veinèd flowers
that close beneath the oppression of a tropic evening, in a land
where the sunsets are bright as the flames of burning amber.
VI
I kiss thy throat, whose ardent pallor is the pallor of marble
warmed by the autumn sun.
VII
I kiss thy mouth, which has the savour and perfume of fruits
agleam with spray from a magic fountain, in the secret Paradise
that we alone shall find; a Paradise whence they that come shall
nevermore depart, for the waters thereof are Lethe, and the fruit is
the fruit of the tree of Life.
 FROM A LETTER
****Will you not join me in Atlantis, where we will go down
through streets of blue and yellow marble to the wharves of
orichalch, and choose us a galley with a golden Eros for figurehead,
and sails of Tyrian sendal? With mariners that knew Odysseus, and
beautiful amber-breasted slaves from the mountain-vales of
Lemuria, we will lift anchor for the unknown fortunate isles of the
outer sea; and, sailing in the wake of an opal sunset, will lose that
ancient land in the glaucous twilight, and see from our couch of
ivory and satin the rising of unknown stars and perished
planets.*** Perhaps we will not return, but will follow the tropic
summer from isle to halcyon isle, across the amaranthine seas of
myth and fable: We will eat the lotos, and the fruit of lands
whereof Odysseus never dreamt; and drink the pallid wines of
faery, grown in a vale of perpetual moonlight. I will find for you a
necklace of rosy-tinted pearls, and a necklace of yellow rubies, and
crown you with precious corals that have the semblance of
sanguine-coloured blossoms. We will roam in the marts of forgotten
cities of jasper, and carnelian-builded ports beyond Cathay; and I
will buy you a gown of peacock azure damascened with copper and
gold and vermilion; and a gown of black samite with runes of
orange, woven by fantastic sorcery without the touch of hands, in a
dim land of spells and philtres.
 FROM THE CRYPTS OF MEMORY
Aeons of aeons ago, in an epoch whose marvelous worlds have
crumbled, and whose mighty suns are less than shadow, I dwelt in
a star whose course, decadent from the high, irremeable heavens
of the past, was even then verging upon the abyss in which, said
astronomers, its immemorial cycle should find a dark and
disastrous close.
Ah, strange was that gulf-forgotten star—how stranger than any
dream of dreamers in the spheres of to-day, or than any vision that
hath soared upon visionaries, in their retrospection of the sidereal
past! There, through cycles of a history whose piled and bronze-
writ records were hopeless of tabulation, the dead had come to
outnumber infinitely the living. And built of a stone that was
indestructible save in the furnace of suns, their cities rose beside
those of the living like the prodigious metropli of Titans, with walls
that overgloom the vicinal villages. And over all was the black
funereal vault of the cryptic heavens—a dome of infinite shadows,
where the dismal sun, suspended like a sole, enormous lamp, failed
to illumine, and drawing back its fires from the face of the
irresolvable ether, threw a baffled and despairing beam on the
vague remote horizons, and shrouded vistas illimitable of the
visionary land.
We were a sombre, secret, many-sorrowed people—we who dwelt
beneath that sky of eternal twilight, pierced by the towering tombs
and obelisks of the past. In our blood was the chill of the ancient
night of time; and our pulses flagged with a creeping prescience of
the lentor of Lethe. Over our courts and fields, like invisible
sluggish vampires born of mausoleums, rose and hovered the black
hours, with wings that distilled a malefic languor made from the
shadowy woe and despair of perished cycles. The very skies were
fraught with oppression, and we breathed beneath them as in a
sepulcher, forever sealed with all its stagnancies of corruption and
slow decay, and darkness impenetrable save to the fretting worm.
Vaguely we lived, and loved as in dreams—the dim and mystic
dreams that hover upon the verge of fathomless sleep. We felt for
our women, with their pale and spectral beauty, the same desire
that the dead may feel for the phantom lilies of Hadean meads. Our
days were spent in roaming through the ruins of lone and
immemorial cities, whose palaces of fretted copper, and streets that
ran between lines of carven golden obelisks, lay dim and ghastly
with the dead light, or were drowned forever in seas of stagnant
shadow; cities whose vast and iron-builded fanes preserved their
gloom of primordial mystery and awe, from which the simulacra of
century-forgotten gods looked forth with unalterable eyes to the
hopeless heavens, and saw the ulterior night, the ultimate oblivion.
Languidly we kept our gardens, whose grey lilies concealed a
necromantic perfume, that had power to evoke for us the dead and
spectral dreams of the past. Or, wandering through ashen fields of
perennial autumn, we sought the rare and mystic immorteles, with
sombre leaves and pallid petals, that bloomed beneath willows of
wan and veil like foliage: or wept with a sweet and nepenthe-laden
dew by the flowing silence of Acherontic waters.
And one by one we died and were lost in the dust of accumulated
time. We knew the years as a passing of shadows, and death itself
as the yielding of twilight unto night.
 A PHANTASY
I have dreamt of an unknown land—a land remote in ulterior time,
and alien space not ascertainable: the desert of a long-completed
past, upon which has settled the bleak, irrevocable silence of
infinitude; where all is ruined save the stone of tombs and
cenotaphs; and where the sole peoples are the kingless, uncounted
tribes of the subterranean dead.
Above this land of my dream, citied with tombs and cenotaphs, a
red and smouldering sun maintains a spectral day, in alternation
with an ashen moon through the black ether where the stars have
long since perished. And through the hush of the consummation of
time, above the riven monuments and crumbled records of alien
history, flit in the final twilight the mysterious wings of seraphim,
sent to fulfill ineffable errands, or confer with demons of the abyss;
and black, gigantic angels, newly returned from missions of
destruction, pause amid the sepulchers to sift from their gloomy
and tremendous vans the pale ashes of annihilated stars.
 THE DEMON, THE ANGEL, AND BEAUTY
Of the Demon who standeth or walketh always with me at my left
hand, I asked: “Hast thou seen Beauty? Her that me-seemeth was
the mistress of my soul in Eternity? Her that is now beyond
question set over me in Time; even though I behold her not, and, it
may be, have never beheld, nor ever shall; her of whose aspect I
am ignorant as noon is concerning any star; her of whom as
witness and testimony, I have found only the hem of her shadow,
or at most, her reflection in a dim and troubled water. Answer, if
thou canst, and tell me, is she like pearls, or like stars? Does she
resemble most the sunlight that is transparent and unbroken, or
the sunlight divided into splendour and iris? Is she the heart of the
day, or the soul of the night?”
To which the Demon answered, after, as I thought, a brief space of
meditation:
“Concerning this Beauty, I can tell thee but little beyond that which
thou knowest. Albeit, in those orbs to which the demons of my rank
have admission, there be greater adumbrations of some
transcendent Mystery than here, yet have I never seen that
Mystery itself, and know not if it be male or female. Aeons ago,
when I was young and incautious, when the world was new and
bright, and there were more stars than now, I, too was attracted by
this Mystery, and sought after it in all accessible spheres. But failing
to find the thing itself, I soon grew weary of embracing its
shadows, and took to the pursuit of illusions less insubstantial. Now
I am become grey and ashen without, and red like old fire within,
who was fiery and flame-coloured all through, back in the star-
thronged aeons of which I speak: Heed me, for I am as wise, and
wary and ancient as the far-travelled and comet-scarred sun; and I
am become of the opinion that the thing Beauty itself does not
exist. Doubtless the semblance thereof is but a web of shadow and
delusion, woven by the crafty hand of God, that He may snare
demons and men therewith, for His mirth, and the laughter of His
archangels.”
The Demon ceased, and took to watching me as usual—obliquely,
and with one eye—an eye that is more red than Aldebaran, and
inscrutable as the gulfs beyond the Hyades.
Then of the Angel, who walketh or standeth always with me at my
right hand, I asked, “Hast thou seen Beauty? Or hast thou heard
any assured rumour concerning Beauty?”
To which the Angel answered, after, as I thought, a moment of
hesitation:
“As to this Beauty, I can tell thee but little beyond that which thou
knowest. Albeit in all the heavens, this Mystery is a topic of the
most frequent and sublime speculation among the archangels, and
a perennial theme for the more inspired singers and harpists of the
cherubim—yea, despite all this, we are greatly ignorant as to its
true nature, and substance, and attributes. But sometimes there
are mighty adumbrations which cover even the superior seraphim
from above their wing-tips, and make unfamiliar twilight in heaven.
And sometimes there is an echo which fills the empyrean, and
hushes the archangelic harps in the midst of their praising of God.
This is not often, and these visitations of echo and shadow spread
an awe over the assembled Thrones and Splendours and
Dominations, which at other times accompanies only the emanence
or appearance of God Himself. Thus are we assured as to the
reality of this Beauty. And because it remains a mystery to us, to
whom naught else is mysterious except God, we conjecture that it
is the thing upon which God meditateth, self-obscured and centred,
and because of which He hath held himself immanifest to us for so
many aeons; that this is the secret which God keepeth even from
the seraphim.”
 THE SHADOWS
There were many shadows in the palace of Augusthes. About the
silver throne that had blackened beneath the invisible passing of
ages, they fell from pillar and broken roof and fretted window in
ever-shifting multiformity. Seeming the black, fantastic spectres of
doom and desolation, they moved through the palace in a gradual,
grave, and imperceptible dance, whose music was the change and
motion of suns and moons. They were long and slender, like all
other shadows before the early light, and behind the declining sun;
squat and intense beneath the desert noontide, and faint with the
withered moon; and in the interlunar darkness, they were as
myriad tongues hidden behind the shut and silent lips of night.
One came daily to that place of shadows and desolation, and sate
upon the silver throne, watching the shadows that were of
desolation. King nor slave disputed him there, in the palace whose
kings and whose slaves were powerless alike in the intangible
dungeon of centuries. The tombs of unnumbered and forgotten
monarchs were white upon the yellow desert roundabout. Some
had partly rotted away, and showed like the sunken eye-sockets of
a skull—blank and lidless beneath the staring heavens; others still
retained the undesecrated seal of death, and were as the closed
eyes of one lately dead. But he who watched the shadows from the
silver throne, heeded not these, nor the fleet wind that dipt to the
broken tombs, and emerged shrilly, its unseen hands dark with the
dust of kings.
He was a philosopher, from what land there was none to know or
ask. Nor was there any to ask what knowledge or delight he sought
in the ruined palace, with eyes alway upon the moving shadows;
nor what were the thoughts that moved through his mind in
ghostly unison with them. His eyes were old and sad with