The Winds

    To me the winds that die and start,
    And strive in wars that never cease,
    Are dearer than the level peace
    That lies unstirred at summer's heart;

    More dear to me the shadowed wold,
    Where, with report of tempest rife,
    The air intensifies with life,
    Than quiet fields of summer's gold.

    I am the winds' admitted friend:
    They seal our linked fellowships
    With speech of warm or icy lips,
    With touch of west and east that blend.

    And when my spirit listless stands,
    With folded wings that do not live,
    Their own assuageless wings they give
    To lift her from the stirless lands.

            *        *        *        *        *

    Within the place unmanifest
    Where central Truth is immanent,
    Lies there a vast, entire content
    Of sound and movement one in rest?

    I know not this. Yet in my heart,
    I feel that where all truths concur,
    The shrine is peaceless with the stir
    Of winds that enter and depart.

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 Medusa Of The Skies

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Unrevealed

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Retribution

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

Lethe

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

English

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The Wind.

The ways of the wind are eerie
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When it tells to the waiting crocus
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When it comes like a balmy blessing
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When it roars in the Autumn season,
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When the wood-ways once so spicy
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When the wild owl crouched and frowsy
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The Mad Wind

    What hast thou seen, O wind,
    Of beauty or of terror
    Surpassing, denied to us,
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    Mad and ecstatical,
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Clark Ashton Smith

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 -
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    Now bend they low as the wind mounts higher,
    And its eerie voice comes piercingly,
    Like the plaint of humanity's misery,
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The Winds

In these green fields, in this green spring,
In this green world of burning sweet
That drives its sour from everything
And burns the Arctic with new heat,
That seems so slow and flies so fleet
On half-seen wing;

In this green world the birds are all
With motion mad, are wild with song;
The grass leaps like a sudden wall
Flung up against a foe that long
Strode round and wrought his frosty wrong.
The bright winds call,

The bright winds answer; the clouds rise
White from the grave, shaking their head,
Strewing the grave-clothes through the skies,
In languid drifting shadow shed
Upon the fields where, slowly spread,
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In every wood is green and gold,
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The Wind.

    The lithe wind races and sings
        Over the grasses and wheat -
    See the emerald floor as it springs
        To the touch of invisible feet!

    Ah, later, the fir and the pine
        Shall stoop to its weightier tread,
    As it tramps the thundering brine
        Till it shudders and whitens in dread!

    Breath of man! a glass of thine own
        Is the wind on the land, on the sea -
    Joy of life at thy touch! - full grown,
        Destruction and death maybe!

Theodore Harding Rand

Wind.

Oh! weird West Wind, that comest from the sea,
    Sad with the murmur of the weary waves,
    Wand'ring for ever through old ocean caves,
Why troublest thou the hearts that list to thee,
With echoes of forgotten misery?

The night is black with clouds that thou art bringing
    From the far waters of the stormy main,
    Welling their woes forth wearily in rain,
Betwixt us and the light their dark course winging,
And dreary shadows o'er the spirit flinging.

Whence is thy power to smite the silent heart,
    Till as of old the unseal'd waters run?
    Whence is thy magic, Oh! thou unseen one,
To make still sorrows from their slumbers start,
And play again, unsought, their bitter part?

We are all one with Nature--every breeze
    Stealeth about...

Walter R. Cassels