Clear in the vistas of memory, The peaks of a world long unremembered, Soared further than clouds, but fell not, Based on hills that shook not nor melted With that burden enormous, hardly to be believed. Rent with stupendous chasms, Full of an umber twilight, I beheld that larger world.
Bright was the twilight, sharp like ethereal wine Above, but low in the clefts it thickened, Dull as with duskier tincture. Like whimsical wings outspread but unstirring, Flowers that seemed spirits of the twilight, That must pass with its passing— Too fragile for day or for darkness, Fed the dusk with more delicate hues than its own. Stars that were nearer, more radiant than ours, Quivered and pulsed in the clear thin gold of the sky.
These things I beheld, Till the gold was shaken with flight Of fantastical wings like broken shadows, Forerunning the darkness; Till the twilight shivered with outcry of eldritch voices, Like pain's last cry ere oblivion.
Clark Ashton Smith
SORROWING OF WINDS
O winds that pass uncomforted Through all the peacefulness of spring, And tell the trees your sorrowing, That they must moan till ye are fled!
Think ye the Tyrian distance holds The crystal of unquestioned sleep? That those forgetful purples keep No veiled, contentious greens and golds?
Half with communicated grief, Half that they are not free to pass With you across the flickering grass, Mourns each vibrating bough and leaf.
And I, with soul disquieted, Shall find within the haunted spring No peace, till your strange sorrowing Is down the Tyrian distance fled.