If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
He sat down, turned over his hourglass, and began to read from a huge book of spells. Flagg had been reading from this book - which was bound in human skin - for a thousand years and had gotten through only a quarter of it. To read too long of this book, written on the high, distant plains of Leng by a madman named Alhazred, was to risk madness.