Autumn Orchards

Read "Autumn Orchards" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/39/autumn-orchards

It seems as though the last handful of poems from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) that I've read share a sense of melancholy, and that theme is certainly present in "Autumn Orchards".  Interweaving elements of history and mythology is another technique that CAS was fond of, and I think he uses it especially well in the second stanza:


The pear-trees lift a Tyrian tinged with blood;
Strange purples brighten in the smouldering plums;
The fire-red gold of peach and cherry comes
To storm the bronzing borders of the wood.


Those lines (and others from the same poem) create a vivid image of sunset at play amongst the treetops of an orchard, and the invocation of the ancient world in "The pear-trees lift a Tyrian tinged with blood" lends a sense of drama that transcends the immediate experience of the narrator.