Clark Ashton Smith Poems

By some strange antepast I have consumed
In a former star foregone the fruits of this;
And frost and dust commingle in the kiss
Of love, with my forsaken self entombed.
...

From the sad leaves withdrawn,
Remote, estranged and cold,
Forgetful autumn's gold
Alone abides in some December dawn.
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What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset's tides of light-—
Opals aglow in saffron seas?
How beautiful they lie, and bright,
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A faery land is this that far and high
And all suffused with tints of pearl and rose,
Above the crimson sunset hangs and glows,
By unseen hands upborne 'twixt earth and sky.
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Thy heart will not believe in love:
Therefore is love become to me
A dream resolved to mockery,
And death and life are less than love.
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Only through the senses have I known you,
But you are nearer than the things of sense—
Nearer than is the daylight in mine eyes,
And nearer
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Forget, forget, and be not sorrowful at all!
Ah, tend no more, in gardens of the terrene years,
This wormwood flowering tall with thy mellifluous tears.
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I have calmed me with the thought of nothingness—
who know that none shall evermore escape
From the world's dream and stand illusionless.
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Around its walls the forests of the west
Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale
Might lie its multifold exterior veil.
Sculptured with signs and meanings unconfessed,
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I write the poems down
Line by line from old anthologies
Printed on the air and ether,
Shelved amid the leaves of trees,
...