Clark Ashton Smith Poems

In starlight, by the ghostly sea,
We ran, we loitered, hand in hand,
Along the lone, unending strand;
Where, flowing in the surf-wet sand,
...

Out of her desert lair the lamia came,
A lovely serpent shaped as women are.
Meeting me there, she hailed me by the name
...

Often, on homeward ways, I come
To a deserted orchard, old and lone,
Unplowed, untrod, with wilding grasses grown
Through rows of pear and plum.
...

From my Stylitean throne,
The crag turned to cloud,
The cloud returned to stone.
...

Lord of the many pangs, the single ecstasy!
From all my rose-red temple builded in thy name,
Pass dawnward with no blasphemies of praise or blame,
No whine of suppliant or moan of psaltery.
...

Alone upon my hill-top,
After the ravelled rains,
I see the cloudy mountains,
I see the misty plains.
...

The mysteries of your former dust,
Your lives declined from solar light—
These would you know, or these surmise?
Beneath a swathed and mummied sun,
...

To the gathered boughs we hold
Flock the goats
From the close-eaten wold.
...

O giant stars, born of eternal light,
O winged flames wherewith the void is sown,
As dreadful prophets of a God unknown,
Ye speak the law in light!
...

Dear one, what do we here ?
Petal by petal falls the alien spring
In gardens where we pass ungarlanded,
And seek once more the doves and myrtles dead
...