Clark Ashton Smith Poems

Scorners of the Muse, beware !
She that you deny is queen
Of a thunder-girt demesne
In the worlds of Otherwhere:
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Je songe à cette terre ancienne
Où des couchants longtemps déchus
Dorent des grands cygnes perdus
Pagayant dans une eau paîenne
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In some Titan city, bells
Gigantically clangorous,
Endless, monotonous,
Ring for dead Enceladus
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At an inn called the Sign
Of the Acherontic Pump,
Two poets drank their ebon wine
In memory of the rose and amber
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We are masters
Of all dreams
Night ones and day ones.
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O ghouls of fetid and funereal midnights,
Say, what do you uncover in your sad labors?
—We have disinterred the Empusa of thy fears
And the frightful Gorgon with her livid eyeballs
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Faces of the four seasons
Throng the bar:
One peers from a time-lost star.
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On boughs a-tremble with the rain,
The blown white flowers of the plum
Their fragile hold awhile retain.
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On the window-sill
Fall the blow-flies that I kill:
Dozens buzz and blunder still.
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O little lances, dipt in grey,
And set in order straight and clean,
How exquisitely clear and keen
Your points against the cobalt day !
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