Atlantis

    Above its domes the gulfs accumulate
    To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed;
    But here the buried waters take no heed -
    Deaf, and with closèd lips from press of weight
    Imposed by ocean. Dim, inanimate,
    On temples of an unremembered creed
    Involved in long, slow tentacles of weed,
    The dead tide lies immovable as Fate.

    From out the ponderous-vaulted ocean-dome,
    A clouded light is questionably shed
    On altars of a goddess garlanded
    With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine;
    And wingèd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam,
    Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine.

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith was an American writer and poet, best known for his contributions to the genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He was a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers around H.P. Lovecraft. Smith's work was characterized by rich, fantastical imagery and vocabulary. He is considered one of the major writers of weird fiction and a key figure in early American speculative fiction.

Clark Ashton Smith

The Maze Of Sleep

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Mystic Meaning

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Wind And The Moon

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

English

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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
    My motion nadir-ward; no moment's flare
    Gives each to each the shapes that, unaware,
    Commingle at my verge, to test the spell
    Of waves intense with night, whose deeps compel
    One face from pain, and rapture, and despair.

    The fruitless earth's denied and cheated sons
    Meet here, where fruitful and unfruitful cease.
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    Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low,
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    Drink at one draught a universe of peace?

Clark Ashton Smith

The Soul Of The Sea

    A wind comes in from the sea,
    And rolls through the hollow dark
    Like loud, tempestuous waters.
    As the swift recurrent tide,
    It pours adown the sky,
    And rears at the cliffs of night
    Uppiled against the vast.

    Like the soul of the sea -
    Hungry, unsatisfied
    With ravin of shores and of ships -
    Come forth on the land to seek
    New prey of tideless coasts,
    It raves, made hoarse with desire,
    And the sounds of the night are dumb
    With the sound of its passing.

Clark Ashton Smith

The Cloud-Islands

    What islands marvellous are these,
    That gem the sunset's tides of light -
    Opals aglow in saffron seas?
    How beautiful they lie, and bright,
    Like some new-found Hesperides!

    What varied, changing magic hues
    Tint gorgeously each shore and hill!
    What blazing, vivid golds and blues
    Their seaward winding valleys fill!
    What amethysts their peaks suffuse!

    Close held by curving arms of land
    That out within the ocean reach,
    I mark a faery city stand,
    Set high upon a sloping beach
    That burns with fire of shimmering sand.

    Of sunset-light is formed each wall;
    Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems;
    And every spire that towers tall
    A ray of golden moonlight gleams;
    Of o...

Clark Ashton Smith

Atlantis

What poets sang in Atlantis? Who can tell
The epics of Atlantis or their names?
The sea hath its own murmurs, and sounds not
The secrets of its silences beneath,
And knows not any cadences enfolded
When the last bubbles of Atlantis broke
Among the quieting of its heaving floor.

O, years and tides and leagues and all their billows
Can alter not man's knowledge of men's hearts -
While trees and rocks and clouds include our being
We know the epics of Atlantis still:
A hero gave himself to lesser men,
Who first misunderstood and murdered him,
And then misunderstood and worshipped him;
A woman was lovely and men fought for her,
Towns burnt for her, and men put men in bondage,
But she put lengthier bondage on them all;
A wanderer toiled among all the isle...

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The Return Of Hyperion

    The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus
    Are just beyond yon mountain-girdle,
    Whose mass is bound around the bulk
    Of the dark, unstirred, unmoving East.
    Alike on the mountains and the plain,
    The night is as some terrific dream,
    That closes the soul in a crypt of dread
    Apart from touch or sense of earth,
    As in the space of Eternity.

    What light unseen perturbs the darkness?
    Behold! it stirs and fluctuates
    Between the mountains and the stars
    That are set as guards above the prison
    Of the captive Titan-god. I know
    That in the deeps beneath, Hyperion
    Divides the pillared vault of dark,
    And stands a space upon its ruin.
    Then light is laid upon the peaks,
    As the hand of one who climbs b...

Clark Ashton Smith

Ode To The Abyss

    O many-gulfed, unalterable one,
    Whose deep sustains
    Far-drifting world and sun,
    Thou wast ere ever star put out on thee;
    And thou shalt be
    When never world remains;
    When all the suns' triumphant strength and pride
    Is sunk in voidness absolute,
    And their majestic music wide
    In vaster silence rendered mute.
    And though God's will were night to dusk the blue,
    And law to cancel and disperse
    The tangled tissues of the universe,
    And mould the suns anew,
    His might were impotent to conquer thee,
    O invisible infinity!
    Thy darks subdue
    All light that treads thee down a space,
    Exulting o'er thy deeps.
    The cycles die, and lo! thy darkness reaps
    The flame of mightiest sta...

Clark Ashton Smith