Postlude Poem by Clark Ashton Smith

Hearkening now the voices of the crowd,
Have you forgot the faint Parnassian music
We heard between the bracken and the cloud?

What have you found amid the many faces?
Nothing remains for me, save the spent echoes
Of words we said in falcon-hovered places.

O tryst too long delayed, too long denied!
I meet on changing paths a faceless phantom
Exile and chill as wisps of eventide.

Empty the forest now, empty the stream;
Your naked body on the noonlit hill
Has gone with the cloudy lovers lost in dream.