Here we have a poem that Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) included in two of his milestone collections of published poetry, beginning with his first volume of verse, The Star-Treader and Other Poems (1912). Perhaps more significantly, he also chose this work for inclusion in his career-spanning Selected Poems (1971).
CAS received early praise for this poem from George Sterling, very shortly after the two writers initiated their relationship via postal mail*. It's no surprise that Sterling took a shine to these lines, since CAS has clearly mastered the sonnet form, and moreover presents a compelling vision of a dying sun defeated by Night, the victor in "that war of gulf-born Titans".
At least one commenter has identified "The Last Night" as a source of inspiration for CAS' Zothique cycle of short stories**, which would begin to see publication twenty years after this poem first appeared in print.
*These letters can be found in The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith published by Hippocampus Press.
**See Jim Rockhill's essay "As Shadows Wait Upon the Sun: Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique" in The Freedom of Fantastic Things: Selected Criticism on Clark Ashton Smith also from Hippocampus Press.
CAS received early praise for this poem from George Sterling, very shortly after the two writers initiated their relationship via postal mail*. It's no surprise that Sterling took a shine to these lines, since CAS has clearly mastered the sonnet form, and moreover presents a compelling vision of a dying sun defeated by Night, the victor in "that war of gulf-born Titans".
At least one commenter has identified "The Last Night" as a source of inspiration for CAS' Zothique cycle of short stories**, which would begin to see publication twenty years after this poem first appeared in print.
*These letters can be found in The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith published by Hippocampus Press.
**See Jim Rockhill's essay "As Shadows Wait Upon the Sun: Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique" in The Freedom of Fantastic Things: Selected Criticism on Clark Ashton Smith also from Hippocampus Press.
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