Read "White Death" at The Eldritch Dark:
This sonnet from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) has a great deal of mystery about it, as he describes sunlight being defeated by the overpowering force of Death. The opening sentence is particularly strong:
Methought the world was bound with final frost:
The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe,
Illumined still the lands it could not thaw.
Right away, the fact that the sun has been "made hueless" suggests a powerful force at work that can constrain the radiance of a star. The writer returns to this theme in the closing lines of the poem, echoing some of the vocabulary of the opening lines quoted above:
All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed
In light invariable nullifed;
All darkness rendered shelterless and pale.
Although Death is present as a physical force in this sonnet, the effective visualization of the light-destroying power of that spectre goes beyond obvious clichés that lesser writers might have leaned on in addressing the same subject matter.
Methought the world was bound with final frost:
The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe,
Illumined still the lands it could not thaw.
Right away, the fact that the sun has been "made hueless" suggests a powerful force at work that can constrain the radiance of a star. The writer returns to this theme in the closing lines of the poem, echoing some of the vocabulary of the opening lines quoted above:
All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed
In light invariable nullifed;
All darkness rendered shelterless and pale.
Although Death is present as a physical force in this sonnet, the effective visualization of the light-destroying power of that spectre goes beyond obvious clichés that lesser writers might have leaned on in addressing the same subject matter.
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