The Retribution

    Old Egypt's gods, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth,
    Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet
    Revealed, were as the levin's fire and heat.
    The hosts of Rome, the Arab and the Goth
    Have left their altars dark, yet stern and wroth
    In olden power they stood, whose wings were fleet,
    And mighty as with strength of storms that meet
    In mingled foam of clouds and ocean-froth.

    Above my dream, with arch of dreaded wings,
    In judgement and in sentence of what crime
    I knew not, sate the gods outcast of time.
        They passed, and lo, a plague of darkness fell,
    Unsleeping, and accurst with nameless things,
        And dreams that stood the ministers of Hell!

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

To The Darkness

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Lethe

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Song To Oblivion

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

English

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Shadow Of Nightmare

    What hand is this, that unresisted grips
    My spirit as with chains, and from the sound
    And light of dreams, compels me to the bound
    Where darkness waits with wide, expectant lips?
    Albeit thereat my footing holds, nor slips,
    The threats of that Omnipotence confound
    All days and hours of gladness, girt around
    With sense of near, unswervable eclipse.

    So lies a land whose noon is plagued with whirr
    Of bats, than their own shadows swarthier,
    Whose flight is traced on roofs of white abodes,
    Wherein from court to court, from room to room,
    In hieroglyphics of abhorrent doom,
    Is slowly trailed the slime of crawling toads.

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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...

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Saturn

    Now were the Titans gathered round their king,
    In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge
    Of drear extremities that clasp the world -
    A land half-moulded by the hasty gods,
    And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars,
    Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone;
    Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep
    Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood,
    Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak
    Among the lesser hills that guard its base.
    Defeat, that gloamed within each countenance
    Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun
    Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold,
    Clumsy of limb, and halting as with weight
    Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments.
    A wind cried round them like a trumpet-...

Clark Ashton Smith

Outlaws.

Owls: they whinney down the night,
    Bats go zigzag by.
Ambushed in shadow out of sight
    The outlaws lie.

Old gods, shrunk to shadows, there
    In the wet woods they lurk,
Greedy of human stuff to snare
    In webs of murk.

Look up, else your eye must drown
    In a moving sea of black
Between the tree-tops, upside down
    Goes the sky-track.

Look up, else your feet will stray
    Towards that dim ambuscade,
Where spider-like they catch their prey
    In nets of shade.

For though creeds whirl away in dust,
    Faith fails and men forget,
These aged gods of fright and lust
    Cling to life yet.

Old gods almost dead, malign,
    Starved of their ancient dues,
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A Dead City

    The twilight reigns above the fallen noon
    Within an ancient land, whose after-time
    Lies like a shadow o'er its ruined prime.
    Like rising mist the night increases soon
    Round shattered palaces, ere yet the moon
    On mute, unsentried walls and turrets climb,
    And touch with whiteness of sepulchral rime
    The desert where a city's bones are strewn.

    She comes at last; unburied, thick, they show
    In all the hoary nakedness of stone.
        From out a shadow like the lips of Death
    Issues a wind, that through the stillness blown,
        Cries like a prophet's ghost with wailing breath
    The weirds of finished and forgotten woe.

Clark Ashton Smith

The Medusa Of The Skies

    Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb,
    The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head,
    Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead
    From pallid skies more death-like than the gloom.
    Now fall her beams till slope and plain assume
    The whiteness of a land whence life is fled;
    And shadows that a sepulcher might shed
    Move livid as the stealthy hands of doom.

    O'er rigid hills and valleys locked and mute,
    A pallor steals as of a world made still
    When Death, that erst had crept, stands absolute -
        An earth now frozen fast by power of eyes
    That malefice and purposed silence fill,
        The gaze of that Medusa of the skies.

Clark Ashton Smith