Song of Sappho's Arabian Daughter

Read "Song of Sappho's Arabian Daughter" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/527/song-of-sappho%27s-arabian-daughter

This poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) was included in Ebony and Crystal (1922) with the title "The Desert Garden", and was later re-titled for inclusion in Selected Poems (1971).

The version of this poem at The Eldritch Dark has a significant typo in the third stanza; here's the corrected text with the updated word in the third line noted in bold:


"Her presence, like a living wind
Each little leaf makes visible,
Shalt enter there, or like the spell
(Upon the lulling leaves divined)
Of silent wind."


As with "In November," CAS sold this poem to Ainslee's Magazine, and with heavy emphasis on floral and olfactory sensations, it does indeed strike a note of gentle charm that is somewhat atypical of most of CAS' verse.