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Nero

by Clark Ashton Smith

This Rome, that was the toil of many men,

The consummation of laborious years -

Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,

And image of the wide desire of kings -

Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,

Fuel of vision, brief embodiment

Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong

Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour,

When ages piled on ages were a flame

To all the years behind, and years to be.

Yet any sunset were as much as this,

Save for the music forced by hands of fire

From out the hard strait silences which bind

Dull Matter's tongueless mouth - a music pierced

With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry

Its agony - and save that I believed

The radiance redder for the blood of men.

Destruction hastens and intensifies

The process that is Beauty, manifests

Ranges of form unknown before, and gives

Motion and voice and hue where otherwise

Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.

If one create, there is the lengthy toil;

The laboured years and days league tow'rd an end

Less than the measure of desire, mayhap,

After the sure consuming of all strength,

And strain of faculties that otherwhere

Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last

Remains to one capacity nor power

For pleasure in the thing that he hath made.

But on destruction hangs but little use

Of time or faculty, but all is turned

To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure,

Of sensuous rapture and observant joy;

And from the intensities of death and ruin,

One draws a heightened and completer life,

And both extends and vindicates himself.

I would I were a god, with all the scope

Of attributes that are the essential core

Of godhead, and its visibility.

I am but emperor, and hold awhile

The power to hasten Death upon his way,

And cry a halt to worn and lagging Life

For others, but for mine own self may not

Delay the one, nor bid the other speed.

There have been many kings, and they are dead,

And have no power in death save what the wind

Confers upon their blown and brainless dust

To vex the eyeballs of posterity.

But were I god, I would be overlord

Of many kings, and were as breath to guide

Their dust of destiny. And were I god,

Exempt from this mortality which clogs

Perception, and clear exercise of will,

What rapture it would be, if but to watch

Destruction crouching at the back of Time,

The tongueless dooms which dog the travelling suns;

The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds,

Fire without light that gnaws the base of things,

And Lethe's mounting tide, that rots the stone

Of fundamental spheres. This were enough

Till such time as the dazzled wings of will

Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt

For very suddenness. Then would I urge

The strong contention and conflicting might

Of chaos and creation, matching them,

Those immemorial powers inimical,

And all their stars and gulfs subservient -

Dynasts of Time, and anarchs of the dark -

In closer war reverseless; and would set

New discord at the universal core,

A Samson-principle to bring it down

In one magnificence of ruin. Yea,

The monster Chaos were mine unleashed hound,

And all my power Destruction's own right arm!

I would exult to mark the smouldering stars

Renew beneath my breath their elder fire,

And feed upon themselves to nothingness.

The might of suns, slow-paced with swinging weight

Of myriad worlds, were made at my desire

One long rapidity of roaring light,

Through which the voice of Life were audible,

And singing of the immemorial dead

Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings

With soaring wrack of systems ruinous.

And were I weary of the glare of these,

I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand

Above a chaos of extinguished suns,

That crowd, and grind, and shiver thunderously,

Lending vast voice and motion, but no ray

To the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs.

Thus would I give my godhead space and speech

For its assertion, and thus pleasure it,

Hastening the feet of Time with casts of worlds

Like careless pebbles, or with shattered suns

Brightening the aspect of Eternity.