Abdul (al-)Hazred, the author of the Necronomicon, wrote the so called unexplainable couplet, which goes as follows:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
The above couplet could be a veiled reference to the cult of the Great Old Ones1. According to the Nameless City narrator, (al-)Hazred dreamed of the Nameless City the night before he sang the “unexplainable couplet”2. It has been translated many times3, even in Latin and Ancient Greek.
The only translation into Latin verses4 was made, as far as I know, by a certain Deinolithos5:
Illud nōn moritur quod polleat usque morārī:
Temporibus mīrīs, Mors, potes ipsa morī.
The meter (an elegiac distich) scans perfectly and I like the parallel between morārī and morī. However, I'm not convinced by the phrase «quod polleat usque morārī», because polleō can be followed by a substantive clause, but it's only the participle pollēns that is followed by an infinitive.
Therefore, I wrote my own version of the couplet, trying to be as literal as possible:
Quod recubāre potest aeternum haud occidit illud,
Insolitīs aevīs Mors licet intereat.
H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, Summer 1926
H. P. Lovecraft, The Nameless City, January 1921
L. G. Abbadie, “The Much-Discussed Couplet”, Ars Necronomica, 26/02/2014
Non metrical translations on Latin Discussion: Quod in aeternum iacere potest, et aeonibus alienis non mortuum est, etiam mors perit., 06/08/2017; H.P. Lovecraft's Quote - That is not dead…, 03/04/2020
Deinolithos, “Latin version of the Necronomicon discovered!”, The Blogicaster, 21/10/2010; Id., “The Necronomicon in English, Latin and Greek: A comparison”, The Blogicaster, 25/10/2010
The pentameter should ideally end with a disyllable. And a connecting ‘’et’ would help show that the pentameter is a continuation, not an explanation, of the hexameter.
Perhaps:
Illud non moritur quodnam usque exstare videtur,
tempore et insolito, Mors, licet ipse cadas.
It’s fine but Ovid’s practice of using only disyllables was thought preferable.