Clark Ashton Smith Poems

I went homeward by the willowed
Stream-bed, knowing
That she waited on the road.
...

This is enchanted ground
Whereto the nymphs are bound;
Where the hoar oaks maintain,
While seasons mount or wane,
...

My dreams are turned to some disordered mime:
A plot that pandemonian shadows feign
Ravels half told; and dead loves live again
In settings of distorted place and time:
...

Erato and Melpomene stumble in the stews
Through purblind alleys where a soused Apollo falls;
And bards pour out upon the altars of the Muse
A sacrifice from cuspidors and urinals.
...

Who
Will heed the downy nestlings
Of the dove the hunter slew?
...

I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,
And spectres terrible and fair
...

Omar, within thy scented garden-close,
When passed with eventide
The starward incense of the waning rose—
Too precious to abide
...

Importunate, the lion-throated sea,
Blind with the mounting foam of winter, mourns
To cliffs where cling the wrenched and laboured roots
Of cypresses, and blossoms granite-grown
...

Thou art the chalice of the sun;
Filled from the fountains of his light,
Thy rimming petals overrun
With nectar morning-pure and bright.
...

Hast heard the voices of the fen,
That softly sing a lethal rune
Where reeds have caught the fallen moon—
A song more sweet than conium is,
...