Tristan to Iseult

Read "Tristan to Iseult" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/609/tristan-to-iseult

Here we have another poem that Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) attributed to his pseudonym Christophe des Laurières.  This time around, the saucy Frenchman is tackling the famous medieval romance of Tristan and Iseult, and although there is plenty of romantic yearning in the poem, there is a note of grim finality as well:


Somewhere, on rose and rosemary,
On lotus red and lotus wan,
Distill the dews of Acheron:
Not yet, not yet, for you and me
To find the placid fields of death
And spend our sighs upon the breath
Of poppies of Persephone.


In the end, it's not one of CAS' better poems, but an interesting excursion into chivalric romance all the same.