FootNotes

“Destroying Angel” by Michael Whelan, (1982)

From Michael Whelan on this piece:

“All the concepts I submitted for the 1982 Year’s Best Horror Stories cover were strong. If I had tried to guess which one would be chosen, the one that became this painting would have been my last guess. But Don Wollheim saw the possibilities in the concept better than I did and selected it to develop for the cover. 

for it’s not what you are

or how you’ve come to be 

aries: ‘Sudden glances, sweet and strange, delicious spites and darling angers’

taurus: ‘But the rose was awake all night for your sake, knowing your promise to me’

gemini: ‘Sweet lips whereupon perpetually did reign the summer calm of golden charity’

cancer: ‘Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls, to the flowers, and be their sun.’

leo: ‘Brighten like the star that shook betwixt the palms of paradise’

virgo: ‘So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip into my bosom and be lost in me.’

libra:  'The lightening laughters dimple the baby-roses in her cheeks; then away she flies’

scorpio: 'I seemed to move among a world of ghosts, and feel myself the shadow of a dream’

sagittarius: 'Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms, the blossoming abysses of your hills?’

capricorn: ‘Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears with harmonies of wind and wave and wood’

aquarius: ‘My soul would live alone unto herself in her high palace there’