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 opal-flame is every hall.

    Alas! how quickly dims their glow!
    What veils their dreamy splendours mar!
    Like broken dreams the islands go,
    As down from strands of cloud and star,
    The sinking tides of daylight flow.

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

To The Sun

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Medusa Of The Skies

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Song Of A Comet

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Mad Wind

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.

Cloud-Break

With a turn of his magical rod,
That extended and suddenly shone,
From the round of his glory some god
Looks forth and is gone.

To the summit of heaven the clouds
Are rolling aloft like steam;
There's a break in their infinite shrouds,
And below it a gleam.
O'er the drift of the river a whiff
Comes out from the blossoming shore;
And the meadows are greening, as if
They never were green before.

The islands are kindled with gold
And russet and emerald dye;
And the interval waters outrolled
Are more blue than the sky.
From my feet to the heart of the hills
The spirits of May intervene,
And a vapor of azure distills
Like a breath on the opaline green.

Only a moment! - and then
The chill and the shadow decline,
On the...

Archibald Lampman

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

Up The Nepigon.

How beautiful, how beautiful,
    Beneath the morning sky,
In bridal veil of snowy mist,
    These dreamy headlands lie!
How beautiful, in soft repose,
    Upon the water's breast,
Steeped in the sunlight's golden calm,
    These fairy islets rest!

A Sabbath hush enfolds the hills,
    And broods upon the deep
Whose music every hollow fills,
    And climbs each rocky steep,
Now low and soft like love's own sigh,
    Now faint and far away,
Now plaining to the answering pines,
    With melancholy lay.

Like white-winged birds, through azure depths,
    Above the restless tide,
With snowy plume and golden crest,
    The fleecy cloudlets glide;
Their dancing shadows fleck the deep,
    Or flit above the green
Of emerald is...

Pamela S. Vining (J. C. Yule)

The Summer Moon

    How is it, O moon, that melting,
    Unstintedly, prodigally,
    On the peaks' hard majesty,
    Till they seem diaphanous
    And fluctuant as a veil,
    And pouring thy rapturous light
    Through pine, and oak, and laurel,
    Till the summer-sharpened green,
    Softening and tremulous,
    Is a lustrous miracle -
    How is it that I find,
    When I turn again to thee,
    That thy lost and wasted light
    Is regained in one magic breath?

Clark Ashton Smith

The Gingham Dream Utterance

    As I watch the clouds assemble, steam-ship fashion, with funnels to
    alert passersby, I realize the Romanovs tore silk & riches from
    every bazaar leaving the bright spot of this evening studded with emerald marks.
    A dot in the ocean is a spark upon which minnows play, their silver
    bellies upturned to imitate the moon's white shawl.

    I am wanting in the delights of the reef narrowly hauled from
    rambunctious depths, the tiniest splashes of green, yellow, blue darting in an upturned fish's tail.
    An octopus rock commands squadrons of fingerlings while the eisel
    fish decorates a steeper, coral garden.

    Jet black sand crowns the lagoon volcanic ages' past the innocence
    of this spurting palm while mounds of pitch dark ants deposit slivers o...

Paul Cameron Brown

The House Of Clouds

I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud,
I build it bright to see,
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.

Cloud-walls of the morning's grey,
Faced with amber column,
Crowned with crimson cupola
From a sunset solemn!
May mists, for the casements, fetch,
Pale and glimmering;
With a sunbeam hid in each,
And a smell of spring.

Build the entrance high and proud,
Darkening and then brightening,
If a riven thunder-cloud,
Veined by the lightning.
Use one with an iris-stain,
For the door within;
Turning to a sound like rain,
As I enter in.

Build a spacious hall thereby:
Boldly, never fe...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning