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

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 Retribution

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

A Live-Oak Leaf

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

To The Sun

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Nirvana

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 Wind And The Moon

    Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark,
    How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest!
    Forever its voice is a voice of the dark,
    Forever its voice is a voice of unrest.
    Oh, list to the pines as they shiver and sway
    'Neath the ceaseless beat of its myriad wings -
    How they moan and they sob like living things
    That cry in the darkness for light and day!
    Now bend they low as the wind mounts higher,
    And its eerie voice comes piercingly,
    Like the plaint of humanity's misery,
    And its burden of vain desire.
    Now to a sad, tense whisper it fails,
    Then wildly and madly it raves and it wails.

    Oh, the night is filled with its sob and its shriek,
    Its weird and its restless, yearning cry,
    As it ...

Clark Ashton Smith

The Night Forest

    Incumbent seemingly
    On the jagged points of peaks
    That end the visible west,
    The rounded moon yet floods
    The valleys hitherward
    With fall of torrential light,
    Ere from the overmost
    Aggressive mountain-cusp,
    She slip to the lower dark.
    But here, on an eastward slope
    Pointed and thick with its pine,
    The forest scarcely remembers
    Her light that is gone as a vision
    Or ecstasy too poignant
    And perilous for duration.
    Withdrawn in what darker web
    Or dimension of dream I know not,
    In silence pre-occupied
    And solemnest rectitude
    The pines uprear, and no sigh
    For the rapture of moonlight past,
    Comes from their bosom of boughs.
    Far in their secrecy

Clark Ashton Smith

Stanzas

Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky)
The Moon re-entering her monthly round,
No faculty yet given me to espy
The dusky Shape within her arms imbound,
That thin memento of effulgence lost
Which some have named her Predecessor's ghost. .

Young, like the Crescent that above me shone,
Nought I perceived within it dull or dim;
All that appeared was suitable to One
Whose fancy had a thousand fields to skim;
To expectations spreading with wild growth,
And hope that kept with me her plighted troth.

I saw (ambition quickening at the view)
A silver boat launched on a boundless flood;
A pearly crest, like Dian's when it threw
Its brightest splendor round a leafy wood;
But not a hint from under-ground, no sign
Fit for the glimmering brow of Proserpi...

William Wordsworth

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

June

Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn
That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread
Through the frore woods, and from its frost-bound bed
Woke the arbutus with her silver horn;
And now May, too, is fled,
The flower-crowned month, the merry laughing May,
With rosy feet and fingers dewy wet,
Leaving the woods and all cool gardens gay
With tulips and the scented violet.

Gone are the wind-flower and the adder-tongue
And the sad drooping bellwort, and no more
The snowy trilliums crowd the forest's floor;
The purpling grasses are no longer young,
And summer's wide-set door
O'er the thronged hills and the broad panting earth
Lets in the torrent of the later bloom,
Haytime, and harvest, and the after mirth,
The slow soft rain, the rushing thunder pl...

Archibald Lampman

Midsummer Noon.

Through shimmering skies the big clouds slowly sail;
    A faint breeze lingers in the rustling beech;
    Atop the withered oak with vagrant speech
The brawling crows call down the sleepy vale;
Unseen the glad cicadas trill their tale
    Of deep content in changeless vibrant screech,
    And where the old fence rambles out of reach,
The drowsy lizard hugs the shaded rail.
Warm odors from the hayfield wander by,
    Afar the homing reaper's noontide tune
Floats on the mellow stillness like a sigh;
    One butterfly, ghost of a vanished June,
Soars dimly where in realms of purple sky
    Dips the wan crescent of the vapory moon.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove