Thursday, November 22, 2018

The Vampire Night

Here we have another early poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) that was unpublished in his lifetime, and not available on The Eldritch Dark, so here's the text itself:


Sunset as of the world's concluding day:
Vain struggles of the sun to climb once more
The irremeable sky with reddening light;
And then, abrupt and unavoidable,
The drop of his exhausted, flameless orb
Into the cold ultimity of space.
Bereft, bewildered, lost, the planet lies,
Wrapt with the tightening grave-cloth of the gloom;
And silence comes, deliberate, assured,
Like Lethe at the feet of gods that stand,
Unkingdomed, disenabled, on its brink.

What change is this that quickens awe confirmed
To live, pulsating fear?  Upon the chords
Of the tense trees, what eldritch hand is laid
That startles into sound such latent dread
As of the damned, within Hell's spacious murk
Eddying invisibly?  Or is the wind
Fraught with a resurrection of the dead--
Ghosts lately born, that knowing not themselves
As phantoms, cry a common fear, and shriek 
Each from the other?  Lo, I seem to hark
The gabblings of the grave, where speak anights
The neighbouring dead; strange outcry of the corpse
Unhallowed by the ghoul's disturbing hand, 
And mumblings out of brainless skulls.

The darkness speaks, her echoing word the wind
That shudders through the stillness like a fear.
All dreams of terror inexpressible
Crowd on the gloom at that invoking voice--
Phantasmal terrors, imageless, to sight
That incommunicably limn themselves
Upon the mind; and maleficent powers
Whose eddyings intensify the dusk,
Albeit bodiless.  About the soul 
They surge with unseen hands that grope and claw,
Felt as the clutch of metal by the mind,
Though light as silence to the shrinking clay.

With fingers of eternal dread the dark
Reaches, and claims its prey; who ventures forth 
The vampire night shall drink his very soul
And leave a living fear within its place!


For starters, "Hell's spacious murk" (line 16) is one of the most memorable phrases that I have read in quite a while.  The entire passage containing that phrase is worth re-visiting:


Upon the chords
Of the tense trees, what eldritch hand is laid
That startles into sound such latent dread
As of the damned, within Hell's spacious murk
Eddying invisibly?


CAS involves the sensory inputs of sound, touch, and sight in this passage, as the "tense trees" experience something dark and twisted.  This approach is used throughout the poem, which ends with something of a bang in the last four lines, wherein we are indirectly warned to stay inside after the sun goes down!

For a poem that was never published while he lived, this work is another indication of just how strong CAS' poetical powers were, even in verses that were probably seen by few other people.  There are some slightly awkward transitions in these lines, but there is also a lot of rich language and potent imagery that is remarkable given that CAS was still a teenager when he wrote this.

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