صفحة 1
THE STAR-TREADER AND OTHER POEMS
BY
CLARK ASHTON SMITH
THE STAR-TREADER AND OTHER POEMS
BY
CLARK ASHTON SMITH
A. M. ROBERTSON
STOCKTON STREET AT UNION SQUARE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
MCMXII
COPYRIGHT 1912
BY
A. M. ROBERTSON
Philopolis Press
San Francisco
TO MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
Page
NERO 1
CHANT TO SIRIUS 5
THE STAR-TREADER 6
THE MORNING POOL 11
THE NIGHT FOREST 12
THE MAD WIND 14
SONG TO OBLIVION 15
MEDUSA 16
ODE TO THE ABYSS 18
THE SOUL OF THE SEA 21
THE BUTTERFLY 22
THE PRICE 26
THE MYSTIC MEANING 27
ODE TO MUSIC 28
THE LAST NIGHT 31
ODE ON IMAGINATION 32
THE WIND AND THE MOON 35
LAMENT OF THE STARS 36
THE MAZE OF SLEEP 39
THE WINDS 40
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 42
A SUNSET 49
THE CLOUD-ISLANDS 50
THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS 52
THE SUMMER MOON 53
THE RETURN OF HYPERION 54
LETHE 55
ATLANTIS 56
THE UNREVEALED 57
THE ELDRITCH DARK 58
THE CHERRY-SNOWS 59
FAIRY LANTERNS 60
NIRVANA 61
THE NEMESIS OF SUNS 62
WHITE DEATH 63
صفحة 2
href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@38410@[email protected]#RETROSPECT_AND_FORECAST" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 64
SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE 65
THE SONG OF A COMET 66
THE RETRIBUTION 69
TO THE DARKNESS 70
A DREAM OF BEAUTY 72
THE DREAM-BRIDGE 73
A LIVE-OAK LEAF 74
PINE NEEDLES 75
TO THE SUN 76
THE FUGITIVES 78
AVERTED MALEFICE 79
THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES 80
A DEAD CITY 81
THE SONG OF THE STARS 82
COPAN 85
A SONG OF DREAMS 86
THE BALANCE 88
SATURN 89
FINIS 99
SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE 65
THE SONG OF A COMET 66
THE RETRIBUTION 69
TO THE DARKNESS 70
A DREAM OF BEAUTY 72
THE DREAM-BRIDGE 73
A LIVE-OAK LEAF 74
PINE NEEDLES 75
TO THE SUN 76
THE FUGITIVES 78
AVERTED MALEFICE 79
THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES 80
A DEAD CITY 81
THE SONG OF THE STARS 82
COPAN 85
A SONG OF DREAMS 86
THE BALANCE 88
SATURN 89
FINIS 99
NERO
This Rome, that was the toil of many men,
The consummation of laborious years—
Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,
And image of the wide desire of kings—
Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,
Fuel of vision, brief embodiment
Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong
Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour,
When ages piled on ages were a flame
To all the years behind, and years to be.
The consummation of laborious years—
Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,
And image of the wide desire of kings—
Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,
Fuel of vision, brief embodiment
Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong
Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour,
When ages piled on ages were a flame
To all the years behind, and years to be.
Yet any sunset were as much as this,
Save for the music forced by hands of fire
From out the hard strait silences which bind
Dull Matter's tongueless mouth—a music pierced
With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry
Its agony—and save that I believed
The radiance redder for the blood of men.
Destruction hastens and intensifies
The process that is Beauty, manifests
Ranges of form unknown before, and gives
Motion and voice and hue where otherwise
Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.
Save for the music forced by hands of fire
From out the hard strait silences which bind
Dull Matter's tongueless mouth—a music pierced
With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry
Its agony—and save that I believed
The radiance redder for the blood of men.
Destruction hastens and intensifies
The process that is Beauty, manifests
Ranges of form unknown before, and gives
Motion and voice and hue where otherwise
Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.
If one create, there is the lengthy toil;
The laboured years and days league tow'rd an end
Less than the measure of desire, mayhap,
After the sure consuming of all strength,
And strain of faculties that otherwhere
Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last
Remains to one capacity nor power
For pleasure in the thing that he hath made.
But on destruction hangs but little use
Of time or faculty, but all is turned
To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure,
Of sensuous rapture and observant joy;
And from the intensities of death and ruin,
One draws a heightened and completer life,
And both extends and vindicates himself.
The laboured years and days league tow'rd an end
Less than the measure of desire, mayhap,
After the sure consuming of all strength,
And strain of faculties that otherwhere
Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last
Remains to one capacity nor power
For pleasure in the thing that he hath made.
But on destruction hangs but little use
Of time or faculty, but all is turned
To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure,
Of sensuous rapture and observant joy;
And from the intensities of death and ruin,
One draws a heightened and completer life,
And both extends and vindicates himself.
I would I were a god, with all the scope
Of attributes that are the essential core
Of godhead, and its visibility.
I am but emperor, and hold awhile
The power to hasten Death upon his way,
And cry a halt to worn and lagging Life
For others, but for mine own self may not
Delay the one, nor bid the other speed.
There have been many kings, and they are dead,
And have no power in death save what the wind
Confers upon their blown and brainless dust
To vex the eyeballs of posterity.
But were I god, I would be overlord
Of many kings, and were as breath to guide
Of attributes that are the essential core
Of godhead, and its visibility.
I am but emperor, and hold awhile
The power to hasten Death upon his way,
And cry a halt to worn and lagging Life
For others, but for mine own self may not
Delay the one, nor bid the other speed.
There have been many kings, and they are dead,
And have no power in death save what the wind
Confers upon their blown and brainless dust
To vex the eyeballs of posterity.
But were I god, I would be overlord
Of many kings, and were as breath to guide
صفحة 3
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Their dust of destiny. And were I god,
Exempt from this mortality which clogs
Perception, and clear exercise of will,
What rapture it would be, if but to watch
Destruction crouching at the back of Time,
The tongueless dooms which dog the travelling suns;
The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds,
Fire without light that gnaws the base of things,
And Lethe's mounting tide, that rots the stone
Of fundamental spheres. This were enough
Till such time as the dazzled wings of will
Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt
For very suddenness. Then would I urge
The strong contention and conflicting might
Of chaos and creation, matching them,
Those immemorial powers inimical,
And all their stars and gulfs subservient—
Dynasts of Time, and anarchs of the dark—
In closer war reverseless; and would set
New discord at the universal core,
A Samson-principle to bring it down
In one magnificence of ruin. Yea,
The monster Chaos were mine unleashed hound,
And all my power Destruction's own right arm!
Their dust of destiny. And were I god,
Exempt from this mortality which clogs
Perception, and clear exercise of will,
What rapture it would be, if but to watch
Destruction crouching at the back of Time,
The tongueless dooms which dog the travelling suns;
The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds,
Fire without light that gnaws the base of things,
And Lethe's mounting tide, that rots the stone
Of fundamental spheres. This were enough
Till such time as the dazzled wings of will
Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt
For very suddenness. Then would I urge
The strong contention and conflicting might
Of chaos and creation, matching them,
Those immemorial powers inimical,
And all their stars and gulfs subservient—
Dynasts of Time, and anarchs of the dark—
In closer war reverseless; and would set
New discord at the universal core,
A Samson-principle to bring it down
In one magnificence of ruin. Yea,
The monster Chaos were mine unleashed hound,
And all my power Destruction's own right arm!
I would exult to mark the smouldering stars
Renew beneath my breath their elder fire,
And feed upon themselves to nothingness.
The might of suns, slow-paced with swinging weight
Of myriad worlds, were made at my desire
One long rapidity of roaring light,
Through which the voice of Life were audible,
And singing of the immemorial dead
Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings
With soaring wrack of systems ruinous.
And were I weary of the glare of these,
I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand
Above a chaos of extinguished suns,
That crowd, and grind, and shiver thunderously,
Lending vast voice and motion, but no ray
To the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs.
Thus would I give my godhead space and speech
For its assertion, and thus pleasure it,
Hastening the feet of Time with casts of worlds
Like careless pebbles, or with shattered suns
Brightening the aspect of Eternity.
Renew beneath my breath their elder fire,
And feed upon themselves to nothingness.
The might of suns, slow-paced with swinging weight
Of myriad worlds, were made at my desire
One long rapidity of roaring light,
Through which the voice of Life were audible,
And singing of the immemorial dead
Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings
With soaring wrack of systems ruinous.
And were I weary of the glare of these,
I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand
Above a chaos of extinguished suns,
That crowd, and grind, and shiver thunderously,
Lending vast voice and motion, but no ray
To the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs.
Thus would I give my godhead space and speech
For its assertion, and thus pleasure it,
Hastening the feet of Time with casts of worlds
Like careless pebbles, or with shattered suns
Brightening the aspect of Eternity.
CHANT TO SIRIUS
What nights retard thee, O Sirius!
Thy light is as a spear,
And thou penetratest them
As a warrior that stabbeth his foe
Even to the center of his life.
Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs;
They form a bridge thereover,
That shall endure till the links of the universe
Are unfastened, and drop apart,
And all the gulfs are one,
Dissevered by suns no longer.
Thy light is as a spear,
And thou penetratest them
As a warrior that stabbeth his foe
Even to the center of his life.
Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs;
They form a bridge thereover,
That shall endure till the links of the universe
Are unfastened, and drop apart,
And all the gulfs are one,
Dissevered by suns no longer.
How strong art thou in thy place!
Thou stridest thine orbit,
And the darkness shakes beneath thee,
As a road that is trodden by an army.
Thou art a god,
In thy temple that is hollowed with light
In the night of infinitude,
And whose floor is the lower void;
Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein.
Thou furrowest space,
Even as an husbandman,
And sowest it with alien seed;
It beareth alien fruits,
And these are thy testimony,
Even as the crops of his fields
Are the testimony of an husbandman.
Thou stridest thine orbit,
And the darkness shakes beneath thee,
As a road that is trodden by an army.
Thou art a god,
In thy temple that is hollowed with light
In the night of infinitude,
And whose floor is the lower void;
Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein.
Thou furrowest space,
Even as an husbandman,
And sowest it with alien seed;
It beareth alien fruits,
And these are thy testimony,
Even as the crops of his fields
Are the testimony of an husbandman.
THE STAR-TREADER
I
A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,
Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth
Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth
Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams
Thine ancient pathway of the suns,
Whose flame is part of thee;
And deeps outreach immutably
Whose largeness runs
Through all thy spirit's mystery.
Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze
Of stars where through thou camest in old days;
Pierce without fear each vast
Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.
A hand strikes off the chains of Time,
A hand swings back the door of years;
Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears,
And opens the strait dream to space sublime."
Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth
Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth
Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams
Thine ancient pathway of the suns,
Whose flame is part of thee;
And deeps outreach immutably
Whose largeness runs
Through all thy spirit's mystery.
Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze
Of stars where through thou camest in old days;
Pierce without fear each vast
Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.
A hand strikes off the chains of Time,
A hand swings back the door of years;
Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears,
And opens the strait dream to space sublime."
II
Who rides a dream, what hand shall stay!
What eye shall note or measure mete
His passage on a purpose fleet,
The thread and weaving of his way!
It caught me from the clasping world,
And swept beyond the brink of Sense,
My soul was flung, and poised, and whirled,
Like to a planet chained and hurled
With solar lightning strong and tense.
Swift as communicated rays
That leap from severed suns a gloom
Within whose waste no suns illume,
The wingèd dream fulfilled its ways.
Through years reversed and lit again
I followed that unending chain
Wherein the suns are links of light;
Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres
The twisting of the threads of years
In weavings wrought of noon and night;
Through stars and deeps I watched the dream unroll,
Those folds that form the raiment of the soul.
What eye shall note or measure mete
His passage on a purpose fleet,
The thread and weaving of his way!
It caught me from the clasping world,
And swept beyond the brink of Sense,
My soul was flung, and poised, and whirled,
Like to a planet chained and hurled
With solar lightning strong and tense.
Swift as communicated rays
That leap from severed suns a gloom
Within whose waste no suns illume,
The wingèd dream fulfilled its ways.
Through years reversed and lit again
I followed that unending chain
Wherein the suns are links of light;
Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres
The twisting of the threads of years
In weavings wrought of noon and night;
Through stars and deeps I watched the dream unroll,
Those folds that form the raiment of the soul.
III
صفحة 4
class="i0">Enkindling dawns of memory,
Each sun had radiance to relume
A sealed, disused, and darkened room
Within the soul's immensity.
Their alien ciphers shown and lit,
I understood what each had writ
Upon my spirit's scroll;
Again I wore mine ancient lives,
And knew the freedom and the gyves
That formed and marked my soul.
Each sun had radiance to relume
A sealed, disused, and darkened room
Within the soul's immensity.
Their alien ciphers shown and lit,
I understood what each had writ
Upon my spirit's scroll;
Again I wore mine ancient lives,
And knew the freedom and the gyves
That formed and marked my soul.
IV
I delved in each forgotten mind,
The units that had builded me,
Whose deepnesses before were blind
And formless as infinity—
Knowing again each former world—
From planet unto planet whirled
Through gulfs that mightily divide
Like to an intervital sleep.
One world I found, where souls abide
Like winds that rest upon a rose;
Thereto they creep
To loose all burden of old woes.
And one I knew, where warp of pain
Is woven in the soul's attire;
And one, where with new loveliness
Is strengthened Beauty's olden chain—
Soft as a sound, and keen as fire—
In light no darkness may depress.
The units that had builded me,
Whose deepnesses before were blind
And formless as infinity—
Knowing again each former world—
From planet unto planet whirled
Through gulfs that mightily divide
Like to an intervital sleep.
One world I found, where souls abide
Like winds that rest upon a rose;
Thereto they creep
To loose all burden of old woes.
And one I knew, where warp of pain
Is woven in the soul's attire;
And one, where with new loveliness
Is strengthened Beauty's olden chain—
Soft as a sound, and keen as fire—
In light no darkness may depress.
V
Where no terrestrial dreams had trod
My vision entered undismayed,
And Life her hidden realms displayed
To me as to a curious god.
Where colored suns of systems triplicate
Bestow on planets weird, ineffable,
Green light that orbs them like an outer sea,
And large auroral noons that alternate
With skies like sunset held without abate,
Life's touch renewed incomprehensibly
The strains of mirth and grief's harmonious spell.
Dead passions like to stars relit
Shone in the gloom of ways forgot;
Where crownless gods in darkness sit
The day was full on altars hot.
I heard—once more a part of it—
The central music of the Pleiades,
And to Alcyone my soul
Swayed with the stars that own her song's control.
Unchallenged, glad I trod, a revenant
In worlds Edenic longly lost;
Or walked in spheres that sing to these,
O'er space no light has crossed,
Diverse as Hell's mad antiphone uptossed
To Heaven's angelic chant.
My vision entered undismayed,
And Life her hidden realms displayed
To me as to a curious god.
Where colored suns of systems triplicate
Bestow on planets weird, ineffable,
Green light that orbs them like an outer sea,
And large auroral noons that alternate
With skies like sunset held without abate,
Life's touch renewed incomprehensibly
The strains of mirth and grief's harmonious spell.
Dead passions like to stars relit
Shone in the gloom of ways forgot;
Where crownless gods in darkness sit
The day was full on altars hot.
I heard—once more a part of it—
The central music of the Pleiades,
And to Alcyone my soul
Swayed with the stars that own her song's control.
Unchallenged, glad I trod, a revenant
In worlds Edenic longly lost;
Or walked in spheres that sing to these,
O'er space no light has crossed,
Diverse as Hell's mad antiphone uptossed
To Heaven's angelic chant.
VI
What vasts the dream went out to find!
I seemed beyond the world's recall
In gulfs where darkness is a wall
To render strong Antares blind!
In unimagined spheres I found
The sequence of my being's round—
Some life where firstling meed of Song,
The strange imperishable leaf,
Was placed on brows that starry Grief
Had crowned, and Pain anointed long;
Some avatar where Love
Sang like the last great star at morn
Ere Death filled all its sky;
Some life in fresher years unworn
Upon a world whereof
Peace was a robe like to the calms that lie
On pools aglow with latter spring:
There Life's pellucid surface took
Clear image of all things, nor shook
Till touch of Death's obscuring wing;
Some earlier awakening
In pristine years, when giant strife
Of forces darkly whirled
First forged the thing called Life—
Hot from the furnace of the suns—
Upon the anvil of a world.
I seemed beyond the world's recall
In gulfs where darkness is a wall
To render strong Antares blind!
In unimagined spheres I found
The sequence of my being's round—
Some life where firstling meed of Song,
The strange imperishable leaf,
Was placed on brows that starry Grief
Had crowned, and Pain anointed long;
Some avatar where Love
Sang like the last great star at morn
Ere Death filled all its sky;
Some life in fresher years unworn
Upon a world whereof
Peace was a robe like to the calms that lie
On pools aglow with latter spring:
There Life's pellucid surface took
Clear image of all things, nor shook
Till touch of Death's obscuring wing;
Some earlier awakening
In pristine years, when giant strife
Of forces darkly whirled
First forged the thing called Life—
Hot from the furnace of the suns—
Upon the anvil of a world.
VII
Thus knew I those anterior ones
Whose lives in mine were blent;
Till, lo! my dream, that held a night
Where Rigel sends no word of might,
Was emptied of the trodden stars,
And dwindled to the sun's extent—
The brain's familiar prison-bars,
And raiment of the sorrow and the mirth
Wrought by the shuttles intricate of earth.
Whose lives in mine were blent;
Till, lo! my dream, that held a night
Where Rigel sends no word of might,
Was emptied of the trodden stars,
And dwindled to the sun's extent—
The brain's familiar prison-bars,
And raiment of the sorrow and the mirth
Wrought by the shuttles intricate of earth.
THE MORNING POOL
All night the pool held mysteries,
Vague depths of night that lay in dream,
Where phantoms of the pale-white stars
Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam.
Vague depths of night that lay in dream,
Where phantoms of the pale-white stars
Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam.
And now it holds the limpid light
And shadeless azure of the skies,
Wherein, like some enclaspèd gem,
The morning's golden glamour lies.
And shadeless azure of the skies,
Wherein, like some enclaspèd gem,
The morning's golden glamour lies.
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
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
صفحة 5
moonlight past,
Comes from their bosom of boughs.
Far in their secrecy
I stand, and the burden of dusk
Dull, but at times made keen
With tingle of fragrances,
Falls on me as a veil
Between my soul and the world.
Comes from their bosom of boughs.
Far in their secrecy
I stand, and the burden of dusk
Dull, but at times made keen
With tingle of fragrances,
Falls on me as a veil
Between my soul and the world.
What veil of trance, O pines,
Divides you from my soul,
That I feel but enter not
Your distances of dream?
Ah! strange, imperative sense
Of world-deep mystery
That shakes from out your boughs—
A fragrance yet more keen,
Pressing upon the mind.
Divides you from my soul,
That I feel but enter not
Your distances of dream?
Ah! strange, imperative sense
Of world-deep mystery
That shakes from out your boughs—
A fragrance yet more keen,
Pressing upon the mind.
The wind shall question you
Of the dream I may not gain,
And all its sombreness
And depth immeasurable,
Shall tremble away in sound
Of speech not understood
That my heart must break to hear.
Of the dream I may not gain,
And all its sombreness
And depth immeasurable,
Shall tremble away in sound
Of speech not understood
That my heart must break to hear.
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
From the memory of thy vision?
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
From the memory of thy vision?
SONG TO OBLIVION
Art thou more fair
For all the beauty gathered up in thee,
As gold and gems within some lightless sea?
For light of flowers, and bloom of tinted air,
Art thou more fair?
For all the beauty gathered up in thee,
As gold and gems within some lightless sea?
For light of flowers, and bloom of tinted air,
Art thou more fair?
Art thou more strong
For powers that turn to thee as unto sleep?
For world and star that find thy ways more deep
Than light may tread, too wearisome for song
Art thou more strong?
For powers that turn to thee as unto sleep?
For world and star that find thy ways more deep
Than light may tread, too wearisome for song
Art thou more strong?
Nay! thou art bare
For power and beauty on thine impotence
Bestowed by fruitful Time's magnificence;
For fruit of all things strong, and bloom of fair,
Thou still art bare.
For power and beauty on thine impotence
Bestowed by fruitful Time's magnificence;
For fruit of all things strong, and bloom of fair,
Thou still art bare.
MEDUSA
As drear and barren as the glooms of Death,
It lies, a windless land of livid dawns,
Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills
That seem the fleshless earth's outjutting ribs,
And plains whose face is crossed and rivelled deep
With gullies twisting like a serpent's track.
The leprous touch of Death is on its stones,
Where for his token visible, the Head
Is throned upon a heap of monstrous rocks,
Grotesque in everlasting ugliness,
Within a hill-ravine, that splits athwart
Like some old, hideous and unhealing scar.
Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes
That mingle with her hair, the Gorgon reigns.
Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings lurk,
Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life,
The gazers come, where, coiled and serpent-swift,
Those levins wait. As 'round an altar-base
Her victims lie, distorted, blackened forms
Of postured horror smitten into stone,—
Time caught in meshes of Eternity—
Drawn back from dust and ruin of the years,
And given to all the future of the world.
The land is claimed of Death: the daylight comes
Half-strangled in the changing webs of cloud
That unseen spiders of bewildered winds
Weave and unweave across the lurid sun
In upper air. Below, no zephyr comes
To break with life the circling spell of death.
Long vapor-serpents twist about the moon,
And in the windy murkness of the sky,
The guttering stars are wild as candle-flames
That near the socket.
It lies, a windless land of livid dawns,
Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills
That seem the fleshless earth's outjutting ribs,
And plains whose face is crossed and rivelled deep
With gullies twisting like a serpent's track.
The leprous touch of Death is on its stones,
Where for his token visible, the Head
Is throned upon a heap of monstrous rocks,
Grotesque in everlasting ugliness,
Within a hill-ravine, that splits athwart
Like some old, hideous and unhealing scar.
Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes
That mingle with her hair, the Gorgon reigns.
Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings lurk,
Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life,
The gazers come, where, coiled and serpent-swift,
Those levins wait. As 'round an altar-base
Her victims lie, distorted, blackened forms
Of postured horror smitten into stone,—
Time caught in meshes of Eternity—
Drawn back from dust and ruin of the years,
And given to all the future of the world.
The land is claimed of Death: the daylight comes
Half-strangled in the changing webs of cloud
That unseen spiders of bewildered winds
Weave and unweave across the lurid sun
In upper air. Below, no zephyr comes
To break with life the circling spell of death.
Long vapor-serpents twist about the moon,
And in the windy murkness of the sky,
The guttering stars are wild as candle-flames
That near the socket.
Thus the land shall be,
And Death shall wait, throned in Medusa's eyes.
Till, in the irremeable webs of night
The sun is snared, and the corroded moon
A dust upon the gulfs, and all the stars
Rotted and fall'n like rivets from the sky,
Letting the darkness down upon all things.
And Death shall wait, throned in Medusa's eyes.
Till, in the irremeable webs of night
The sun is snared, and the corroded moon
A dust upon the gulfs, and all the stars
Rotted and fall'n like rivets from the sky,
Letting the darkness down upon all things.
ODE TO THE ABYSS
O many-gulfed, unalterable one,
Whose deep sustains
Far-drifting world and sun,
Thou wast ere ever star put out on thee;
And thou shalt be
When never world remains;
When all the suns' triumphant strength and pride
Is sunk in voidness absolute,
And their majestic music wide
In vaster silence rendered mute.
And though God's will were night to dusk the blue,
And law to cancel and disperse
The tangled tissues of the universe,
And mould the suns anew,
His might were impotent to conquer thee,
O invisible infinity!
Thy darks subdue
All light that treads thee down a space,
Exulting o'er thy deeps.
The cycles die, and lo! thy darkness reaps
The flame of mightiest stars;
In aeon-implicating wars
Thou tearest planets from their place;
Worlds granite-spined
To thine erodents yield
Whose deep sustains
Far-drifting world and sun,
Thou wast ere ever star put out on thee;
And thou shalt be
When never world remains;
When all the suns' triumphant strength and pride
Is sunk in voidness absolute,
And their majestic music wide
In vaster silence rendered mute.
And though God's will were night to dusk the blue,
And law to cancel and disperse
The tangled tissues of the universe,
And mould the suns anew,
His might were impotent to conquer thee,
O invisible infinity!
Thy darks subdue
All light that treads thee down a space,
Exulting o'er thy deeps.
The cycles die, and lo! thy darkness reaps
The flame of mightiest stars;
In aeon-implicating wars
Thou tearest planets from their place;
Worlds granite-spined
To thine erodents yield
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Their treasures centrally confined
In crypts by continental pillars sealed.
What suns and worlds have been thy prey
Through unhorizoned stretches of the Past!
What spheres that now essay
Time's undimensioned vast,
Shall plunge forgotten to thy gloom at length,
With life that cried its query of the Night
To ears with silence filled!
What worlds unborn shall dare thy strength,
Girt by a sun's unwearied might,
And dip to darkness when the sun is stilled!
Their treasures centrally confined
In crypts by continental pillars sealed.
What suns and worlds have been thy prey
Through unhorizoned stretches of the Past!
What spheres that now essay
Time's undimensioned vast,
Shall plunge forgotten to thy gloom at length,
With life that cried its query of the Night
To ears with silence filled!
What worlds unborn shall dare thy strength,
Girt by a sun's unwearied might,
And dip to darkness when the sun is stilled!
O incontestable Abyss,
What light in thine embrace of darkness sleeps—
What blaze of a sidereal multitude
No peopled world is left to miss!
What motion is at rest within thy deeps—
What gyres of planets long become thy food—
Worlds unconstrainable,
That plunged therein to peace,
Like tempest-worn and crew-forsaken ships;
And suns that fell
To huge and ultimate eclipse,
And lasting gyre-release!
What sound thy gulfs of silence hold!
Stupendous thunder of the meeting stars,
And crash of orbits that diverged,
With Life's thin song are merged;
Thy quietudes enfold
Paean and threnody as one,
And battle-blare of unremembered wars
With festal songs
Sung in the Romes of ruined spheres,
And music that belongs
To younger, undiscoverable years
With words of yesterday.
Ah, who may stay
Thy soundless world-devouring tide?
O thou whose hands pluck out the light of stars,
Are worlds grown but as fruit for thee?
May no sufficient bars,
Nor marks inveterate abide
To baffle thy persistency?
Still and unstriving now,
What plottest thou,
Within thy universe-ulterior deeps,
Dark as the final lull of suns?
What new advancement of the night
On citadels of stars around whose might
Thy slow encroachment runs,
And crouching silence, thunder-potent, sleeps?
What light in thine embrace of darkness sleeps—
What blaze of a sidereal multitude
No peopled world is left to miss!
What motion is at rest within thy deeps—
What gyres of planets long become thy food—
Worlds unconstrainable,
That plunged therein to peace,
Like tempest-worn and crew-forsaken ships;
And suns that fell
To huge and ultimate eclipse,
And lasting gyre-release!
What sound thy gulfs of silence hold!
Stupendous thunder of the meeting stars,
And crash of orbits that diverged,
With Life's thin song are merged;
Thy quietudes enfold
Paean and threnody as one,
And battle-blare of unremembered wars
With festal songs
Sung in the Romes of ruined spheres,
And music that belongs
To younger, undiscoverable years
With words of yesterday.
Ah, who may stay
Thy soundless world-devouring tide?
O thou whose hands pluck out the light of stars,
Are worlds grown but as fruit for thee?
May no sufficient bars,
Nor marks inveterate abide
To baffle thy persistency?
Still and unstriving now,
What plottest thou,
Within thy universe-ulterior deeps,
Dark as the final lull of suns?
What new advancement of the night
On citadels of stars around whose might
Thy slow encroachment runs,
And crouching silence, thunder-potent, sleeps?
THE SOUL OF THE SEA
A wind comes in from the sea,
And rolls through the hollow dark
Like loud, tempestuous waters.
As the swift recurrent tide,
It pours adown the sky,
And rears at the cliffs of night
Uppiled against the vast.
And rolls through the hollow dark
Like loud, tempestuous waters.
As the swift recurrent tide,
It pours adown the sky,
And rears at the cliffs of night
Uppiled against the vast.
Like the soul of the sea—
Hungry, unsatisfied
With ravin of shores and of ships—
Come forth on the land to seek
New prey of tideless coasts,
It raves, made hoarse with desire,
And the sounds of the night are dumb
With the sound of its passing.
Hungry, unsatisfied
With ravin of shores and of ships—
Come forth on the land to seek
New prey of tideless coasts,
It raves, made hoarse with desire,
And the sounds of the night are dumb
With the sound of its passing.
THE BUTTERFLY
I
O wonderful and wingèd flow'r,
That hoverest in the garden-close,
Finding in mazes of the rose,
The beauty of a Summer hour!
That hoverest in the garden-close,
Finding in mazes of the rose,
The beauty of a Summer hour!
O symbol of Impermanence,
Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
A word that in her song is sung,
Appealing to the inner sense!
Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
A word that in her song is sung,
Appealing to the inner sense!
Of that great mystic harmony,
All lovely things are notes and words—
The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
The flame-white stars, the surging sea,
All lovely things are notes and words—
The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
The flame-white stars, the surging sea,
The aureate light of sudden dawn,
The sunset's crimson afterglow,
The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.
The sunset's crimson afterglow,
The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.
Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
From Nature's multitudinous store—
Imperfect were the melody!
A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
From Nature's multitudinous store—
Imperfect were the melody!