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

Averted Malefice

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Mystic Meaning

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

To The Sun

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

The Masque Of Forsaken Gods

Clark Ashton Smith, Simple Poetry

English

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The Wind.

The ways of the wind are eerie
And I love them all,
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Spring, Winter, and Fall.

When it tells to the waiting crocus
Its beak to show,
And hangs on the wayside locust
Bloom-bunches of snow.

When it comes like a balmy blessing
From the musky wood,
The half-grown roses caressing
Till their cheeks show blood.

When it roars in the Autumn season,
And whines with rain
Or sleet like a mind without reason,
Or a soul in pain.

When the wood-ways once so spicy
With bud and bloom
Are desolate, sear, and icy
As the icy tomb.

When the wild owl crouched and frowsy
In the rotten tree
Wails dolorous, cold, and drowsy,
His shuddering melody.

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The Mad Wind

    What hast thou seen, O wind,
    Of beauty or of terror
    Surpassing, denied to us,
    That with precipitate wings,
    Mad and ecstatical,
    Thou spurnest the hollows and trees
    That offer thee refuge of peace,
    And findest within the sky
    No safety nor respite
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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 -
    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,
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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,
Each shadow dies.

In every wood is green and gold,
The unbridged river runs all green
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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