Clark Ashton Smith Poems

Like ghosts returning stealthily
From those grey lands
Palled with funereal ashes falling
After the burnt-out sunset,
...

Against my heart your heart is closed; you bid me go:
What ways are left in all the world for love to know ?
Desolate oceans, and the light of lonely plains,
Dead moons that wander in the wastes of ice and snow—
...

White lilies frail and cold,
With hearts of elfin gold;
Briefer than all brief things your hidden bloom,
Beneath the sombre grove -
...

Lost and alien lie the leas,
Purfled all with euphrasies,
Where the lunar unicorn
Breasts an amber-pouring morn
...

In opal mist involved, and silver snows,
The mountains front the slow-unfolding morn,
While half the west lies darkling, and forlorn
The last star flees unheeded as it rose;
...

From the fallen leaf
And from my deciduous heart
Fades the scarlet.
...

'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light
The elves upon their midnight-way;
That fairy toil and elfin play
Receive their beams of magic white.
...

O lords and gods that are! the assigning tide, upon
Some prowless beach where a forgotten fisher dwells,
At last will leave the sea-flung jars of Solomon;
...

On skies of tropic evening, broad and beryl-green,
Above a tranquil sea of molten malachite,
With flare of scarlet wings, in long and level flight,
The soundless, fleet flamingoes pass to isles unseen.
...

Pale fire of snow had lit the dusk for me:
Astray with mind half-consciously intent
I had not thought the wood so imminent—
Pregnant with pine and sombre cypress-tree.
...