Poems by Clark Ashton Smith

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Clark Ashton Smith – Poems by Clark Ashton Smith

In English

A Dead City
The twilight reigns above the fallen noon
Within an ancient land, whose after-time
Lies like a shadow o’er its ruined prime. … Continue Reading …

A Dream Of Beauty
I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing
That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and hue—
The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew, … Continue Reading …

A Live-Oak Leaf
How marvellous this bit of green
I hold, and soon shall throw away!
Its subtile veins, its vivid sheen, … Continue Reading …

A Song Of Dreams
A voice came to me from the night, and said,
What profit hast thou in thy dreaming
Of the years that are set … Continue Reading …

A Sunset
As blood from some enormous hurt
The sanguine sunset leapt;
Across it, like a dabbled skirt, … Continue Reading …

Atlantis
Above its domes the gulfs accumulate
To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed;
But here the buried waters take no heed— … Continue Reading …

Averted Malefice
Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen,
Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat
Found, and each root malevolently fat … Continue Reading …

Chant To Sirius
What nights retard thee, O Sirius!
Thy light is as a spear,
And thou penetratest them … Continue Reading …

Copan
Around its walls the forests of the west
Gloom, as about some mystery’s final pale
Might lie its multifold exterior veil. … Continue Reading …

Fairy Lanterns
‘Tis said these blossom-lanterns light
The elves upon their midnight way;
That fairy toil and elfin play … Continue Reading …

Finis
It seemed that from the west
The live red flame of sunset,
Eating the dead blue sky … Continue Reading …

Lament Of The Stars
One tone is mute within the starry singing,
The unison fulfilled, complete before;
One chord within the music sounds no more, … Continue Reading …

Lethe
I flow beneath the columns that upbear
The world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell;
Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers tell … Continue Reading …

Medusa
As drear and barren as the glooms of Death,
It lies, a windless land of livid dawns,
Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills … Continue Reading …

Nirvana
Poised as a god whose lone, detachèd post,
An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks
Of finite years, and those unvaried darks … Continue Reading …

Nero
This Rome, that was the toil of many men,
The consummation of laborious years—
Fulfilment’s crown to visions of the dead, … Continue Reading …

Ode On Imagination
Imagination’s eyes
Outreach and distance far
The vision of the greatest star … Continue Reading …

Ode To Music
O woven fabric and bright web of sound,
Whose threads are magical,
And with swift weaving thrall … Continue Reading …

Ode To The Abyss
O many-gulfed, unalterable one,
Whose deep sustains
Far-drifting world and sun, … Continue Reading …

Pine Needles
O little lances, dipped in grey,
And set in order straight and clean,
How delicately clear and keen … Continue Reading …

Retrospect And Forecast
Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast
The breast that fed thee—Death, disguiseless, stern;
Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn, … Continue Reading …

Saturn
Now were the Titans gathered round their king,
In a waste region slipping tow’rd the verge
Of drear extremities that clasp the world— … Continue Reading …

Shadow Of Nightmare
What hand is this, that unresisted grips
My spirit as with chains, and from the sound
And light of dreams, compels me to the bound … Continue Reading …

Song To Oblivion
Art thou more fair
For all the beauty gathered up in thee,
As gold and gems within some lightless sea? … Continue Reading …

The Balance
The world upheld their pillars for awhile—
Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood,
The hot wind sifts across the solitude … Continue Reading …

The Butterfly
O wonderful and wingèd flow’r,
That hoverest in the garden-close,
Finding in mazes of the rose, … Continue Reading …

The Cherry-Snows
The cherry-snows are falling now;
Down from the blossom-clouded sky
Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough, … Continue Reading …

The Cloud-Islands
What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset’s tides of light—
Opals aglow in saffron seas? … Continue Reading …

The Dream-Bridge
All drear and barren seemed the hours,
That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown.
The dead leaves fell like brownish notes … Continue Reading …

The Eldritch Dark
Now as the twilight’s doubtful interval
Closes with night’s accomplished certainty,
A wizard wind goes crying eerily; … Continue Reading …

The Fugitives
O fugitive fragrances
That tremble heavenward
Unceasing, or if ye linger, … Continue Reading …

The Last Night
I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height,
A mountain’s utmost eminence of snow,
Whence I beheld the plain outstretched below … Continue Reading …

The Mad Wind
What hast thou seen, O wind,
Of beauty or of terror
Surpassing, denied to us, … Continue Reading …

The Masque Of Forsaken Gods
What consummation of the toiling moon
O’ercomes the midnight blue with violet,
Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer’s green, … Continue Reading …

The Maze Of Sleep
Sleep is a pathless labyrinth,
Dark to the gaze of moons and suns,… Continue Reading …

The Medusa Of The Skies
Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb,
The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head,
Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead … Continue Reading …

The Morning Pool
All night the pool held mysteries,
Vague depths of night that lay in dream,
Where phantoms of the pale-white stars … Continue Reading …

The Mystic Meaning
Alas! that we are deaf and blind
To meanings all about us hid!
What secrets lurk the woods amid? … Continue Reading …

The Nemesis Of Suns
Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world,
Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun—
Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun … Continue Reading …

The Night Forest
Incumbent seemingly
On the jagged points of peaks
That end the visible west, … Continue Reading …

The Price
Behind each thing a shadow lies;
Beauty hath e’er its cost: … Continue Reading …

The Retribution
Old Egypt’s gods, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth,
Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet
Revealed, were as the levin’s fire and heat. … Continue Reading …

The Return Of Hyperion
The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus
Are just beyond yon mountain-girdle,
Whose mass is bound around the bulk … Continue Reading …

The Snow-Blossoms
But yestereve the winter trees
Reared leafless, blackly bare,
Their twigs and branches poignant-marked … Continue Reading …

The Song Of A Comet
A plummet of the changing universe,
Far-cast, I flare
Through gulfs the sun’s uncharted orbits bind, … Continue Reading …

The Song Of The Stars
From the final reach of the upper night
To the nether darks where the comets die,
From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light … Continue Reading …

The Soul Of The Sea
A wind comes in from the sea,
And rolls through the hollow dark
Like loud, tempestuous waters. … Continue Reading …

The Star-Treader
A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,
Saying, “Make haste: the webs of death and birth
Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth … Continue Reading …

The Summer Moon
How is it, O moon, that melting,
Unstintedly, prodigally,
On the peaks’ hard majesty, … Continue Reading …

The Unrevealed
How dense the glooms of Death, impervious
To aught of old memorial light! How strait
The sunless road, suspended, separate, … Continue Reading …

The Wind And The Moon
Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark,
How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest!
Forever its voice is a voice of the dark, … Continue Reading …

The Winds
To me the winds that die and start,
And strive in wars that never cease,
Are dearer than the level peace … Continue Reading …

To The Darkness
Thou hast taken the light of many suns,
And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom.
Even as candle-flames … Continue Reading …

To The Sun
Thy light is as an eminence unto thee,
And thou are upheld by the pillars of thy strength.
Thy power is a foundation for the worlds; … Continue Reading …

White Death
Methought the world was bound with final frost;
The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe,
Illumined yet the lands it could not thaw. … Continue Reading …

Bilingual

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Clark Ashton Smith – Poems by Clark Ashton Smith