Wednesday, January 9, 2019

A Dead City


Read "A Dead City" at The Eldritch Dark:


The version of this early poem by Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) at The Eldritch Dark has a somewhat vexing error on line 13, where "wailing" was captured incorrectly as "waiting".  The corrected line reads as shown below in the very evocative closing of this sonnet:


From out a shadow like the lips of Death
Issues a wind, that through the ruins blown,
Cries like a prophet's ghost, with wailing breath,
The weirds of finished and forgotten woe.


This poem really captures the feeling of a haunting, ghost-like wind stirring through the remains of the dead city.  The strong use of aural elements is very notable in this work.

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