The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith

by Clark Ashton Smith

  With tongues intolerably lengthening,

  That lick the blenchèd heavens. But there lives

  (Secure as in a garden walled from wind)

  A lonely flower by a placid well,

  Midmost the flaring tumult of the flames,

  That roar as roars a storm-possessèd sea,

  Impacable forever: And within

  That simple grail the blossom lifts, there lies

  One drop of an incomparable dew,

  Which heals the parchèd weariness of kings,

  And cures the wound of wisdom. I am page

  To an emperor who reigns ten thousand years,

  And through his labyrinthine palace-rooms,

  Through courts and colonnades and balconies

  Wherein immensity itself is mazed,

  I seek the golden gorget he hath lost,

  On which the names of his conniving stars

  Are writ in little sapphires; and I roam

  For centuries, and hear the brazen clocks

  Innumerably clang with such a sound

  As brazen hammers make, by devils dinned

  On tombs of all the dead; and nevermore

  I find the gorget, but at length I find

  A sealèd room whose nameless prisoner

  Moans with a nameless torture, and would turn

  To hell’s red rack as to a lilied couch

  From that whereon they stretched him; and I find,

  Prostrate upon a lotus-painted floor,

  The loveliest of all beloved slaves

  My emperor hath, and from her pulseless side

  A serpent rises, whiter than the root

  Of some venefic bloom in darkness grown,

  And gazes up with green-lit eyes that seem

  Like drops of cold, congealing poison.

  Hark!

  What word was whispered in a tongue unknown,

  In crypts of some impenetrable world?

  Whose is the dark, dethroning secrecy

  I cannot share, though I am king of suns

  And king therewith of strong eternity,

  Whose gnomons with their swords of shadow guard

  My gates, and slay the intruder? Silence loads

  The wind of ether, and the worlds are still

  To hear the word that flees me. All my dreams

  Fall like a rack of fuming vapours raised

  To semblance by a necromant, and leave

  Spirit and sense unthinkably alone,

  Above a universe of shrouded stars,

  And suns that wander, cowled with sullen gloom,

  Like witches to a Sabbath.

  Fear is born

  In crypts below the nadir, and hath crawled

  Reaching the floor of space and waits for wings

  To lift it upward, like a hellish worm

  Fain for the flesh of seraphs. Eyes that gleam,

  But are not eyes of suns or galaxies,

  Gather and throng to the base of darkness; flame

  Behind some black, abysmal curtain burns,

  Implacable, and fanned to whitest wrath

  By raisèd wings that flail the whiffled gloom,

  And make a brief and broken wind that moans,

  As one who rides a throbbing rack. There is

  A Thing that crouches, worlds and years remote,

  Whose horns a demon sharpens, rasping forth

  A note to shatter the donjon-keeps of time,

  And crack the sphere of crystal.

  All is dark

  For ages, and my tolling heart suspends

  Its clamour, as within the clutch of death,

  Tightening with tense, hermetic rigours. Then,

  In one enormous, million-flashing flame,

  The stars unveil, the suns remove their cowls,

  And beam to their responding planets; time

  Is mine once more, and armies of its dreams

  Rally to that insuperable throne,

  Firmed on the central zenith.

  Now I seek

  The meads of shining moly I had found

  In some remoter vision, by a stream

  No cloud hath ever tarnished; where the sun,

  A gold Narcissus, loiters evermore

  Above his golden image: But I find

  A corpse the ebbing water will not keep,

  With eyes like sapphires that have lain in hell,

  And felt the hissing embers; and the flow’rs

  About me turn to hooded serpents, swayed

  By flutes of devils in a hellish dance

  Meet for the nod of Satan, when he reigns

  Above the raging Sabbath, and is wooed

  By sarabands of witches. But I turn

  To mountains guarding with their horns of snow

  The source of that befoulèd rill, and seek

  A pinnacle where none but eagles climb,

  And they with failing pennons. But in vain

  I flee, for on that pylon of the sky,

  Some curse hath turned the unprinted snow to flame—

  Red fires that curl and cluster to my tread,

  Trying the summit’s narrow cirque. And now,

  I see a silver python far beneath—

  Vast as a river that a fiend hath witched,

  And forced to flow remèant in its course

  To fountains whence it issued. Rapidly

  It winds from slope to crumbling slope, and fills

  Ravines and chasmal gorges, till the crags

  Totter with coil on coil incumbent. Soon

  It hath entwined the pinnacle I keep,

  And gapes with a fanged, unfathomable maw,

  Wherein great Typhon, and Enceladus,

  Were orts of daily glut. But I am gone,

  For at my call a hippogriff hath come,

  And firm between his thunder-beating wings,

  I mount the sheer cerulean walls of noon,

  And see the earth, a spurnèd pebble, fall

  Lost in the fields of nether stars—and seek

  A planet where the outwearied wings of time

  Might pause and furl for respite, or the plumes

  Of death be stayed, and loiter in reprieve

  Above some deathless lily: For therein,

  Beauty hath found an avatar of flow’rs—

  Blossoms that clothe it as a coloured flame,

  From peak to peak, from pole to sullen pole,

  And turn the skies to perfume. There I find

  A lonely castle, calm and unbeset,

  Save by the purple spears of amaranth,

  And tender-sworded iris. Walls upbuilt

  Of flushèd marble, wonderful with rose,

  And domes like golden bubbles, and minarets

  That take the clouds as coronal—these are mine,

  For voiceless looms the peaceful barbican,

  And the heavy-teethed portcullis hangs aloft

  As if to smile a welcome. So I leave

  My hippogriff to crop the magic meads,

  And pass into a court the lilies hold,

  And tread them to a fragrance that pursues

  To win the portico, whose columns, carved

  Of lazuli and amber, mock the palms

  Of bright, Aidennic forests—capitalled

  With fronds of stone fretted to airy lace,

  Enfolding drupes that seem as tawny clusters

  Of breasts of unknown houris; and convolved

  With vines of shut and shadowy-leavèd flow’rs,

  Like the dropt lids of women that endure

  Some loin-dissolving rapture. Through a door

  Enlaid with lilies twined luxuriously,

  I enter, dazed and blinded with the sun,

  And hear, in gloom that changing colours cloud,

  A chuckle sharp as crepitating ice,

  Upheaved and cloven by shoulders of the damned

  Who strive in Antenora. When my eyes

  Undazzle, and the cloud of colour fades,

>   I find me in a monster-guarded room,

  Where marble apes with wings of griffins crowd

  On walls an evil sculptor wrought, and beasts

  Wherein the sloth and vampire-bat unite,

  Pendulous by their toes of tarnished bronze,

  Usurp the shadowy interval of lamps

  That hang from ebon arches. Like a ripple,

  Borne by the wind from pool to sluggish pool

  In fields where wide Cocytus flows his bound,

  A crackling smile around that circle runs,

  And all the stone-wrought gibbons stare at me

  With eyes that turn to glowing coals. A fear

  That found no name in Babel, flings me on,

  Breathless and faint with horror, to a hall

  Within whose weary, self-reverting round,

  The languid curtains, heavier than palls,

  Unnumerably depict a weary king,

  Who fain would cool his jewel-crusted hands

  In lakes of emerald evening, or the fields

  Of dreamless poppies pure with rain. I flee

  Onward, and all the shadowy curtains shake

  With tremors of a silken-sighing mirth,

  And whispers of the innumerable king,

  Breathing a tale of ancient pestilence,

  Whose very words are vile contagion. Then

  I reach a room where caryatides,

  Carved in the form of tall, voluptuous Titan women,

  Surround a throne of flowering ebony

  Where creeps a vine of crystal. On the throne,

  There lolls a wan, enormous Worm, whose bulk,

  Tumid with all the rottenness of kings,

  O’erflows its arms with fold on creasèd fold

  Of fat obscenely bloating. Open-mouthed

  He leans, and from his throat a score of tongues,

  Depending like to wreaths of torpid vipers,

  Drivel with phosphorescent slime, that runs

  Down all his length of soft and monstrous folds,

  And creeping among the flow’rs of ebony,

  Lends them the life of tiny serpents. Now,

  Ere the Horror ope those red and lashless slits

  Of eyes that draw the gnat and midge, I turn,

  And follow down a dusty hall, whose gloom,

  Lined by the statues with their mighty limbs,

  Ends in golden-roofèd balcony

  Sphering the flowered horizon.

  Ere my heart

  Hath hushed the panic tumult of its pulses,

  I listen, from beyond the horizon’s rim,

  A mutter faint as when the far simoon,

  Mounting from unknown deserts, opens forth,

  Wide as the waste, those wings of torrid night

  That fling the doom of cities from their folds,

  And musters in its van a thousand winds

  That with disrooted palms for besoms, rise

  And sweep the sands to fury. As the storm,

  Approaching, mounts and loudens to the ears

  Of them that toil in fields of sesame,

  So grows the mutter, and a shadow creeps

  Above the gold horizon, like a dawn

  Of darkness climbing sunward. Now they come,

  A Sabbath of abominable shapes,

  Led by the fiends and lamiae of worlds

  That owned my sway aforetime! Cockatrice,

  Python, tragelaphus, leviathan,

  Chimera, martichoras, behemoth,

  Geryon and sphinx, and hydra, on my ken

  Arise as might some Afrite-builded city,

  Consummate in the lifting of a lash,

  With thunderous domes and sounding obelisks,

  And towers of night and fire alternate! Wings

  Of white-hot stone along the hissing wind,

  Bear up the huge and furnace-hearted beasts

  Of hells beyond Rutilicus; and things

  Whose lightless length would mete the gyre of moons—

  Born from the caverns of a dying sun,

  Uncoil to the very zenith, half disclosed

  From gulfs below the horizon; octopi

  Like blazing moons with countless arms of fire,

  Climb from the seas of ever-surging flame

  That roll and roar through planets unconsumed,

  Beating on coasts of unknown metals; beasts

  That range the mighty worlds of Alioth, rise,

  Aforesting the heavens with multitudinous horns,

  Within whose maze the winds are lost; and borne

  On cliff-like brows of plunging scolopendras,

  The shell-wrought tow’rs of ocean-witches loom,

  And griffin-mounted gods, and demons throned

  On sable dragons, and the cockodrills

  That bear the spleenful pygmies on their backs;

  And blue-faced wizards from the worlds of Saiph,

  On whom Titanic scorpions fawn; and armies

  That move with fronts reverted from the foe,

  And strike athwart their shoulders at the shapes

  Their shields reflect in crystal; and eidola

  Fashioned within unfathomable caves

  By hands of eyeless peoples; and the blind

  And worm-shaped monsters of a sunless world,

  With krakens from the ultimate abyss,

  And Demogorgons of the outer dark,

  Arising, shout with multitudinous thunders,

  And threatening me with dooms ineffable

  In words whereat the heavens leap to flame,

  Advance on the magic palace! Thrown before,

  For league on league, their blasting shadows blight

  And eat like fire the amaranthine meads,

  Leaving an ashen desert! In the palace,

  I hear the apes of marble shriek and howl,

  And all the women-shapen columns moan,

  Babbling with unknown terror. In my fear,

  A monstrous dread unnamed in any hell,

  I rise, and flee with the fleeing wind for wings,

  And in a trice the magic palace reels,

  And spiring to a single tow’r of flame,

  Goes out, and leaves nor shard nor ember! Flown

  Beyond the world, upon that fleeing wind,

  I reach the gulf’s irrespirable verge,

  Where fails the strongest storm for breath and fall,

  Supportless, through the nadir-plungèd gloom,

  Beyond the scope and vision of the sun,

  To other skies and systems. In a world

  Deep-wooded with the multi-coloured fungi,

  That soar to semblance of fantastic palms,

  I fall as falls the meteor-stone, and break

  A score of trunks to powder. All unhurt,

  I rise, and through the illimitable woods,

  Among the trees of flimsy opal, roam,

  And see their tops that clamber, hour by hour,

  To touch the suns of iris. Things unseen,

  Whose charnel breath informs the tideless air

  With spreading pools of fetor, follow me

  Elusive past the ever-changing palms;

  And pittering moths, with wide and ashen wings,

  Flit on before, and insects ember-hued,

  Descending, hurtle through the gorgeous gloom,

  And quench themselves in crumbling thickets. Heard

  Far-off, the gong-like roar of beasts unknown

  Resounds at measured intervals of time,

  Shaking the riper trees to dust, that falls

  In clouds of acrid perfume, stifling me

  Beneath a pall of iris.

  Now the palms

  Grow far apart and lessen momently

  To shrubs a dwarf might topple. Over them

  I see an empty desert, all ablaze

  With amethysts and rubies, and the dust

  Of garnets or carnelians. On I roam,

  Treading the gorgeous grit, that dazzles me

  With le
aping waves of endless rutilance,

  Whereby the air is turned to a crimson gloom,

  Through which I wander, blind as any Kobold;

  Till underfoot the grinding sands give place

  To stone or metal, with a massive ring

  More welcome to mine ears than golden bells,

  Or tinkle of silver fountains. When the gloom

  Of crimson lifts, I stand upon the edge

  Of a broad black plain of adamant, that reaches,

  Level as windless water, to the verge

  Of all the world; and through the sable plain,

  A hundred streams of shattered marble run,

  And streams of broken steel, and streams of bronze,

  Like to the ruin of all the wars of time,

  To plunge, with clangour of timeless cataracts

  Adown the gulfs eternal.

  So I follow,

  Between a river of steel and a river of bronze,

  With ripples loud and tuneless as the clash

  Of a million lutes; and come to the precipice

  From which they fall, and make the mighty sound

  Of a million swords that meet a million shields,

  Or din of spears and armour in the wars

  Of all the worlds and aeons: Far beneath,

  They fall, through gulfs and cycles of the void,

  And vanish like a stream of broken stars,

  Into the nether darkness; nor the gods

  Of any sun, nor demons of the gulf,

  Will dare to know what everlasting sea

  Is fed thereby, and mounts forevermore

  With mighty tides unebbing.

  Lo, what cloud,

  Or night of sudden and supreme eclipse,

  Is on the suns of opal? At my side,

  The rivers run with a wan and ghostly gleam,

  Through darkness falling as the night that falls

  From mighty spheres extinguished! Turning now,

  I see, betwixt the desert and the suns,

  The poisèd wings of all the dragon-rout,

  Far-flown in black occlusion thousand-fold

  Through stars, and deeps, and devastated worlds,

  Upon my trail of terror! Griffins, rocs,

  And sluggish, dark chimeras, heavy-winged

  After the ravin of dispeopled lands,

  With harpies, and the vulture-birds of hell—

  Hot from abominable feasts and fain

  To cool their beaks and talons in my blood—

  All, all have gathered, and the wingless rear,

  With rank on rank of foul, colossal Worms,

  Like pillars of embattled night and flame,

  Looms on the wide horizon! From the van,

  I hear the shriek of wyvers, loud and shrill