Clark Ashton Smith

The twilight reigns above the fallen noon Within an ancient land, whose after-time Lies like a shadow o'er its ruined prime.

I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and hue - The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew,

How marvellous this bit of green I hold, and soon shall throw away! Its subtile veins, its vivid sheen,

A voice came to me from the night, and said, What profit hast thou in thy dreaming Of the years that are set

As blood from some enormous hurt The sanguine sunset leapt; Across it, like a dabbled skirt,

Above its domes the gulfs accumulate To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed; But here the buried waters take no heed -

Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen, Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat Found, and each root malevolently fat

What nights retard thee, O Sirius! Thy light is as a spear, And thou penetratest them

Around its walls the forests of the west Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale Might lie its multifold exterior veil.

'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light The elves upon their midnight way; That fairy toil and elfin play

It seemed that from the west The live red flame of sunset, Eating the dead blue sky

One tone is mute within the starry singing, The unison fulfilled, complete before; One chord within the music sounds no more,

I flow beneath the columns that upbear The world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell; Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers tell

As drear and barren as the glooms of Death, It lies, a windless land of livid dawns, Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills

This Rome, that was the toil of many men, The consummation of laborious years - Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,

Poised as a god whose lone, detach'd post, An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks Of finite years, and those unvaried darks

Imagination's eyes Outreach and distance far The vision of the greatest star

O woven fabric and bright web of sound, Whose threads are magical, And with swift weaving thrall

O many-gulfed, unalterable one, Whose deep sustains Far-drifting world and sun,

O little lances, dipped in grey, And set in order straight and clean, How delicately clear and keen

Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast The breast that fed thee - Death, disguiseless, stern; Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn,

Now were the Titans gathered round their king, In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge Of drear extremities that clasp the world -

What hand is this, that unresisted grips My spirit as with chains, and from the sound And light of dreams, compels me to the bound

Art thou more fair For all the beauty gathered up in thee, As gold and gems within some lightless sea?

The world upheld their pillars for awhile - Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood, The hot wind sifts across the solitude

I O wonderful and wing'd flow'r, That hoverest in the garden-close,

The cherry-snows are falling now; Down from the blossom-clouded sky Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough,

What islands marvellous are these, That gem the sunset's tides of light - Opals aglow in saffron seas?

All drear and barren seemed the hours, That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown. The dead leaves fell like brownish notes

Now as the twilight's doubtful interval Closes with night's accomplished certainty, A wizard wind goes crying eerily;

O fugitive fragrances That tremble heavenward Unceasing, or if ye linger,

I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height, A mountain's utmost eminence of snow, Whence I beheld the plain outstretched below

What hast thou seen, O wind, Of beauty or of terror Surpassing, denied to us,

SCENE: A moonlit glade on a summer midnight THE POET What consummation of the toiling moon

Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the colored clue of dreams,

Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb, The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head, Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead

All night the pool held mysteries, Vague depths of night that lay in dream, Where phantoms of the pale-white stars

Alas! that we are deaf and blind To meanings all about us hid! What secrets lurk the woods amid?

Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world, Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun - Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun

Incumbent seemingly On the jagged points of peaks That end the visible west,

Behind each thing a shadow lies; Beauty hath e'er its cost: Within the moonlight-flooded skies

Old Egypt's gods, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth, Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet Revealed, were as the levin's fire and heat.

The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus Are just beyond yon mountain-girdle, Whose mass is bound around the bulk

But yestereve the winter trees Reared leafless, blackly bare, Their twigs and branches poignant-marked

A plummet of the changing universe, Far-cast, I flare Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind,

From the final reach of the upper night To the nether darks where the comets die, From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light

A wind comes in from the sea, And rolls through the hollow dark Like loud, tempestuous waters.

I A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams, Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth

How is it, O moon, that melting, Unstintedly, prodigally, On the peaks' hard majesty,

How dense the glooms of Death, impervious To aught of old memorial light! How strait The sunless road, suspended, separate,

Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark, How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest! Forever its voice is a voice of the dark,

To me the winds that die and start, And strive in wars that never cease, Are dearer than the level peace

Thou hast taken the light of many suns, And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom. Even as candle-flames

Thy light is as an eminence unto thee, And thou are upheld by the pillars of thy strength. Thy power is a foundation for the worlds;

Methought the world was bound with final frost; The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe, Illumined yet the lands it could not thaw.