Chant To Sirius

    What nights retard thee, O Sirius!
    Thy light is as a spear,
    And thou penetratest them
    As a warrior that stabbeth his foe
    Even to the center of his life.
    Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs;
    They form a bridge thereover,
    That shall endure till the links of the universe
    Are unfastened, and drop apart,
    And all the gulfs are one,
    Dissevered by suns no longer.

    How strong art thou in thy place!
    Thou stridest thine orbit,
    And the darkness shakes beneath thee,
    As a road that is trodden by an army.
    Thou art a god,
    In thy temple that is hollowed with light
    In the night of infinitude,
    And whose floor is the lower void;
    Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein.
    Thou furrowest space,
    Even as an husbandman,
    And sowest it with alien seed;
    It beareth alien fruits,
    And these are thy testimony,
    Even as the crops of his fields
    Are the testimony of an husbandman.

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 Mystic Meaning

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Eldritch Dark

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Star-Treader

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

A Sunset

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

English

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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;
    They are builded thereon as upon a lofty rock
    Whereto no enemy hath access.
    Thou puttest forth thy rays, and they hold the sky
    As in the hollow of an immense hand.
    Thou erectest thy light as four walls,
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    Thy flame is a stronghold based as a mountain;
    Its bastions are tall, and firm like stone.

    The worlds are bound with the ropes of thy will;
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    With bands that are stouter than iron manifold,
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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
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    Exulting o'er thy deeps.
    The cycles die, and lo! thy darkness reaps
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Sirius

'Since Sinus crossed the Milky Way, sixty thousand years have gone.' - GARRETT P. SERVISS.

Since Sirius crossed the Milky Way
    Full sixty thousand years have gone,
Yet hour by hour, and day by day,
    This tireless star speeds on and on.

Methinks he must be moved to mirth
    By that droll tale of Genesis,
Which says creation had its birth
    For such a puny world as this.

To hear how One who fashioned all
    Those Solar Systems, tier on tiers,
Expressed in little Adam's fall
    The purpose of a million spheres.

And, witness of the endless plan,
    To splendid wrath he must be wrought
By pigmy creeds presumptuous man
    Sends forth as God's primeval thought.

Perchance from half a hundred stars
    He hears as ma...

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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
    Hast thou taken the souls of men,
    With winds from out a hollow place;
    They are hid in the abyss as in a sea,
    And the gulfs are over them
    As the weight of many peaks,
    As the depth of many seas;
    Thy shields are between them and the light;
    They are past its burden and bitterness;
    The spears of the day shall not touch them,
    The chains of the sun shall not hale them forth.

    Many men there were,
    In the days that are now of thy realm,
    That thou hast sealed with the seal of many deeps;
    Their feet were as eagles' wings in the quest of Truth -
    Aye, mightily they desired her face,...

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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
    To the central gloom of the midmost sky,
    In our mazeful gyres we fly.
    And our flight is a choral chant of flame,
    That ceaseless fares to the outer void,
    With the undersong of the peopled spheres,
    The voices of comet and asteroid,
    And the wail of the spheres destroyed.
    Forever we sing to a god unseen -
    In the dark shall our voices fail?
    The void is his robe inviolate,
    The night is his awful veil -
    How our fires grow dim and pale!

    From the ordered gyres goes ever afar
    Our song of flame o'er the void unknown,
    Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star.

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The Song Of A Comet

    A plummet of the changing universe,
    Far-cast, I flare
    Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind,
    And spaces bare
    That intermediate darks immerse
    By road of sun nor world confined.
    Upon my star-undominated gyre
    I mark the systems vanish one by one;
    Among the swarming worlds I lunge,
    And sudden plunge
    Close to the zones of solar fire;
    Or 'mid the mighty wrack of stars undone,
    Flash, and with momentary rays
    Compel the dark to yield
    Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze
    In ashes chill is now inurned.
    A space revealed,
    I see their planets turned,
    Where holders of the heritage of breath
    Exultant rose, and sank to barren death
    Beneath the stars' unhe...

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