The Winter Moonlight

Read "Winter Moonlight" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/655/winter-moonlight-%28the%29

Having read a couple hundred early poems by Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) over the last year, I find myself increasingly enthralled by his simple nature poems, which are quite a contrast to his better-known verses from the realms of the cosmic and the supernatural.  I don't in any way dislike his work in those latter categories, but the nature studies reveal a more personal side of the poet that I find very appealing.

And in that vein, we have "Winter Moonlight".  First things first - there is a significant typo in the version of this poem at The Eldritch Dark, so here's the corrected first stanza, with the corrected word noted in bold:


The silence of the silver night
Lies visibly upon the pines;
In marble flame the moon declines
Where spectral mountains dream in light.


The phrase "marble flame" is both visually rich and much more intelligible than "marble tame"!

However, what I enjoy most about "Winter Moonlight" is the closing stanza:


Carven of steel or fretted stone,
One stark and leafless autumn tree
With shadows made of ebony
Leans on the moon-ward field alone.


That image of a single pine tree casting a shadow on a moonlit field is crystalline and indelible, so much so that I can almost believe that what I picture while reading the poem is exactly what CAS sought to capture in writing it.