This poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) concerns a lake nymph, and is a good example of what Kenneth Yasuda described as "a haiku moment", which he defined thusly:
...that moment of absolute intensity when the poet's grasp of his intuition is complete, so that the image lives its own life...It is a poetry without ideas, though there may be ideas in it...A successful haiku renders then a speaking, vibrant image.
In "The Limniad", CAS satisfies these criteria by presenting a concrete image of the nymph rising to the water's surface, causing a rupture and color transition in the green surface of the pool. It successfully captures the visual quality of a specific moment without excess verbiage or description.
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