Nocturne

Read "Nocturne" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/379/nocturne

This is the later of two poems with the same title written by Clark Ashton Smith (CAS).  I reviewed the earlier work a few months ago.

More interestingly, this version of "Nocturne" is strikingly similar to CAS' poem "Moon-Dawn" which I read more recently.  Both poems incorporate cypress and pine trees interacting with the moon.  On a more superficial level, both poems are short, consisting of only a pair of quatrains.

Given that this version of "Nocturne" essentially describes the same scene as "Moon-Dawn", I prefer this version for its gentler tone and moody evocation of a landscape.  There are fewer elements of this poem that immediately identify it as the work of CAS, and yet that simply demonstrates that as an artist, he was capable of quite a range.