Song To Oblivion

    Art thou more fair
    For all the beauty gathered up in thee,
    As gold and gems within some lightless sea?
    For light of flowers, and bloom of tinted air,
    Art thou more fair?

    Art thou more strong
    For powers that turn to thee as unto sleep?
    For world and star that find thy ways more deep
    Than light may tread, too wearisome for song
    Art thou more strong?

    Nay! thou art bare
    For power and beauty on thine impotence
    Bestowed by fruitful Time's magnificence;
    For fruit of all things strong, and bloom of fair,
    Thou still art bare.

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

A Dead City

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Lethe

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Return Of Hyperion

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Last Night

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Ode To Music

    O woven fabric and bright web of sound,
    Whose threads are magical,
    And with swift weaving thrall
    And hold the spirit bound!
    We may not know whence thy strange sorceries fall -
    Whether they be Earth's voices wild and strong,
    Her high and perfect song.
    Or broken dreams of higher worlds unfound.
    For, lo, thou art as dreams.
    And to thy realm all hidden things belong -
    All fugitive and evanescent gleams
    The soul hath vainly sought;
    All mystic immanence;
    All visions of ungrasped magnificence,
    And great ideals pinnacled in thought;
    All paths with marvel fraught
    That lead to lands obscure:
    For, lo, upon thy road of sound we pass,
    Seeking thy magic lure,
    To vales mist-implica...

Clark Ashton Smith

The Butterfly

    I

    O wonderful and wingèd flow'r,
    That hoverest in the garden-close,
    Finding in mazes of the rose,
    The beauty of a Summer hour!

    O symbol of Impermanence,
    Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
    A word that in her song is sung,
    Appealing to the inner sense!

    Of that great mystic harmony,
    All lovely things are notes and words -
    The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
    The flame-white stars, the surging sea,

    The aureate light of sudden dawn,
    The sunset's crimson afterglow,
    The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
    The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.

    Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
    A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
    From Nature's multi...

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

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,...

Clark Ashton Smith

Ode On Imagination

    Imagination's eyes
    Outreach and distance far
    The vision of the greatest star
    That measures instantaneously -
    Enisled therein as in a sea -
    Its cincture of the system-laden skies.
    Abysses closed about with night
    A tribute yield
    To her retardless sight;
    And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores
    Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores.
    She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield,
    And through the obstruction of his vestment dire,
    Pierces the centermost sublimity
    Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire
    Heaves upward like a monstrous sea,
    And inly riven by Titanic throes,
    Fills all his frame with outward cataract
    Of separate and immingling torrent streams.
    Her eyes e...

Clark Ashton Smith

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,
    And a roof with many beams and pillars.
    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;
    Like steeds are they stayed and contrained
    By the reins of invisible lightnings.
    With bands that are stouter than iron manifold,
    And stronger than the cords of the gulfs,
    Thou with...

Clark Ashton Smith