Clark Ashton Smith Poems

O world, thou art the form, the name, the symbol of my weariness:
But, older than thy drooling god, mine ennui had its prime abode
Potential in the fathomless, foreshaping yawn of night and flame.
...

There is a silence in the world
Since we have said farewell;
...

Like arabesques of ebony,
The cypresses, in silhouette,
Fantastically cleave and fret
A moon of yellow ivory.
...

In the green and flowerless garden I have dreamt,
Lying beneath perennial moons apart,
Whose cypress-builded bowers
And ivy-plighted myrtles none shall part;
...

Who fares to find the sunset ere it fly,
Turning to light and fire the further west,
Shall have the veils of twilight for his guest,
And all the falling of an ashen sky.
...

The moon declines in lonely gold
Among the stars of ashen-grey—
Veiling the pallors of decay
With clouds and glories, fold on fold.
...

Above its domes the gulfs accumulate.
Far up, the sea-gales blare their bitter screed:
But here the buried waters take no heed—
Deaf, and with welded lips pressed down by weight
...

Though the roses
Wreathe no more the garden
And the garden-dial,
Intenser grows the essence
...

In silence now the purpling summer passes,
The swallows fly;
The failing river scantly glasses,
Where amber twilights wane,
...

Cast to the world, and lost forever,
And over the heavens drawn again-
Lightly woven and broken ever-
Endless gossamers of rain
...