Ebony and Crystal
Poems in Verse and Prose

BY

CLARK ASHTON SMITH

AUTHOR OF

The Star-Treader and Other Poems
Odes and Sonnets

Copyright 1922
by
CLARK ASHTON SMITH

Printed by the
AUBURN JOURNAL
Auburn, Calif.

DEDICATION

TO

SAMUEL LOVEMAN

[CONTENTS]

PREFACE, by George Sterling.
POEMS
Arabesque[1]
Beyond the Great Wall[2]
To Omar Khayyam[3]
Strangeness[5]
The Infinite Quest[6]
Rosa Mystica[7]
The Nereid[8]
In Saturn[9]
Impression[10]
Triple Aspect[11]
Desolation[12]
The Orchid[13]
A Fragment[14]
Crepuscle[15]
Inferno[16]
Mirrors[17]
Belated Love[18]
The Absence of the Muse[19]
Dissonance[20]
To Nora May French[21]
In Lemuria[24]
Recompense[25]
Exotique[26]
Transcendence[27]
Satiety[28]
The Ministers of Law[29]
Coldness[30]
The Desert Garden[31]
The Crucifixion of Eros[32]
The Exile[33]
Ave Atque Vale[34]
Solution[35]
The Tears of Lilith[36]
A Precept[37]
Remembered Light[38]
Song[39]
Haunting[40]
The Hidden Paradise[41]
Cleopatra[42]
Ecstasy[43]
Union[44]
Psalm45
In November[47]
Symbols[48]
The Hashish-Eater; or, the Apocalypse of Evil[49]
The Sorrow of the Winds[65]
Artemis[66]
Love is Not Yours, Love is Not Mine[67]
The City in the Desert[68]
The Melancholy Pool[69]
The Mirrors of Beauty[70]
Winter Moonlight[71]
To the Beloved[72]
Requiescat[73]
Mirage[74]
Inheritance[75]
Autumnal[76]
Chant of Autumn[77]
Echo of Memnon[78]
Twilight on the Snow[79]
Image[80]
The Refuge of Beauty[81]
Nightmare[82]
The Mummy[83]
Forgetfulness[84]
Flamingoes[85]
The Chimaera[86]
Satan Unrepentant[87]
The Abyss Triumphant[90]
The Motes[91]
The Medusa of Despair[92]
Laus Mortis[93]
The Ghoul and the Seraph[94]
At Sunrise[99]
The Land of Evil Stars[100]
The Harlot of the World[102]
The Hope of the Infinite[103]
Love Malevolent[104]
Palms[105]
Memnon at Midnight[106]
Eidolon[107]
The Kingdom of Shadows[108]
Requiescat in Pace[110]
Alexandrines[112]
Ashes of Sunset[113]
November Twilight[114]
Sepulture[115]
Quest[116]
Beauty Implacable[117]
A Vision of Lucifer118
Desire of Vastness[119]
Anticipation[120]
A Psalm to the Best Beloved[121]
The Witch in the Graveyard[122]
POEMS IN PROSE
The Traveler[127]
The Flower-Devil[129]
Images[130]
The Black Lake[131]
Vignettes[132]
A Dream of Lethe[134]
The Caravan[135]
The Princess Almeena[136]
Ennui[137]
The Statue of Silence[139]
Remoteness[140]
The Memnons of the Night[141]
The Garden and the Tomb[142]
In Cocaigne[143]
The Litany of the Seven Kisses[144]
From a Letter[145]
From the Crypts of Memory[146]
A Phantasy[148]
The Demon, the Angel, and Beauty[149]
The Shadows[151]

[PREFACE]

Who of us care to be present at the accouchment of the immortal? I think that we so attend who are first to take this book in our hands. A bold assertion, truly, and one demonstrable only in years remote from these; and—dust wages no war with dust. But it is one of those things that I should most “like to come back and see.”

Because he has lent himself the more innocently to the whispers of his subconscious daemon, and because he has set those murmurs to purer and harder crystal than we others, by so much the longer will the poems of Clark Ashton Smith endure. Here indeed is loot against the forays of moth and rust. Here we shall find none or little of the sentimental fat with which so much of our literature is larded. Rather shall one in Imagination’s “misty mid-region,” see elfin rubies burn at his feet, witch-fires glow in the nearer cypresses, and feel upon his brow a wind from the unknown. The brave hunters of fly-specks on Art’s cathedral windows will find little here for their trouble, and both the stupid and the over-sophisticated would best stare owlishly and pass by: here are neither kindergartens nor skyscrapers. But let him who is worthy by reason of his clear eye and unjaded heart wander across these borders of beauty and mystery and be glad.

GEORGE STERLING.

San Francisco, October 28, 1922.