Thursday, September 20, 2018

At Midnight


This early poem by Clark Ashton Smith was unpublished in his lifetime, and not available on The Eldritch Dark, so here's the text itself:


Sleepless I stand at Night's mysterious noon
Upon the hill, to watch the heavens unroll
Their star-emblazoned hieroglyphic scroll
And listen to the song the waters croon
To which the winds of night their harps entune--
The melodies which gathering to a whole
Do strangely, deeply stir and thrill the soul
Recalling music of some long-waned moon
Who love her beauty and her mystery.
Speak, too, of all her brooding loveliness
Wherewith my thrilling spirit holds commune
And, rapt in understanding sympathy,
Doth feel her [           ] mood upon me press.


The brackets in the last line indicate a missing word, implying that CAS never finished this poem.

Theres's not much about this poem that I find particularly notable.  There is a nice rhythm and flow to the language, but among the fifty-odd poems by CAS that I have read so far, this one simply doesn't stand out in anyway, so I'm not surprised that the author did not see fit to include it in any of the collections published during his lifetime.

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