Sonnet

Read "Sonnet" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/532/sonnet-%28empress%29

This is yet another poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) that saw publication in Weird Tales, this time in the April 1929 issue of The Unique Magazine.  

The dark Empress to whom the poem is addressed is unidentified, but clearly is a woman (or female entity) of great ambition and vision who is left to contemplate:


...what god, or ghost,
Or spacial demon for thy spirit's mate
Art fain to choose?


Whoever this person is, CAS captures the scope of her immense longing in the poem's powerful conclusion, describing what is in her heart:


The passion of the impossible, the pride
Of lust immortal for the monstrous ire
And pain of love in scarlet worlds apart.


The use of alliteration in the phrases "passion of the impossible" and "pride / Of lust immortal" injects a rhythmic urgency to those closing lines which is the highlight of the work.