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.
...

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

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

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,
...

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.
...

I went homeward by the willowed
Stream-bed, knowing
That she waited on the road.
...

To you, that went from Arcady
To follow after worldly shows,
My songs shall bring unfailingly
The scent of bay and forest rose.
...