The Morning Pool

    All night the pool held mysteries,
    Vague depths of night that lay in dream,
    Where phantoms of the pale-white stars
    Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam.

    And now it holds the limpid light
    And shadeless azure of the skies,
    Wherein, like some enclaspèd gem,
    The morning's golden glamour lies.

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 Cherry-Snows

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Nirvana

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Pine Needles

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Night Forest

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.

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 Eldritch Dark

    Now as the twilight's doubtful interval
    Closes with night's accomplished certainty,
    A wizard wind goes crying eerily;
    And in the glade unsteady shadows crawl,
    Timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fall
    As with some dreadful witches' ecstasy,
    Flung upward to the dark, whence glitters free
    The crooked moon, impendent over all.

    Twin veils of covering cloud and silence thrown
    Across the movement and the sound of things,
        Make blank the night, till in the broken west
    The moon's ensanguined blade awhile is shown....
        The night grows whole again.... The shadows rest,
    Gathered beneath a greater shadow's wings.

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

The Dream-Bridge

    All drear and barren seemed the hours,
    That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown.
    The dead leaves fell like brownish notes
    Within the rain's grey monotone.

    There came a lapse between the showers;
    The clouds grew rich with sunset gleams;
    Then o'er the sky a rainbow sprang -
    A bridge unto the Land of Dreams.

Clark Ashton Smith

A Pool Among The Rocks

I know a pool, whose crystalline repose
Sleeps under walls of granite, whence the pine
Leans looking at its image, line for line
Repeated with the sumach and wild-rose
That redden on the rocks; where, at day's close,
The sunset dreams, and lights incarnadine
Dark waters and the place seems brimmed with wine,
A giant cup that splendour overflows.
Night, in her livery of stars and moon,
Stoops to its mirror, gazing steadily;
And, saddened by her beauty, drops one tear,
A falling star; while round it sighs the rune
Of winds, conspirators that sweep from sea,
Whispering of things that fill the heart with fear.

Madison Julius Cawein

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.
    And when their lords, the mightier, hidden Ones,
    Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low,
    Shall they not come, and from the oblivious flow
    Drink at one draught a universe of peace?

Clark Ashton Smith