Sunday, September 16, 2018

Autumn's Pall

Read "Autumn's Pall" at The Eldritch Dark:


Once again, I'm quite impressed by the ability of Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) to create an effective nature study in a very few lines of poetry.  Here he invokes a robust image of snow covering the last remnants of the preceding season.  

There are three sentences in this poem, and the middle sentence identifies the actors responsible for the current situation:


                    Night's hours, like thieves
Have stol'n them all, and now the Winter weaves
Where erst they lay, an ermine pall of snow.


This is great stuff - the image of Winter weaving "an ermine pall of snow" is particularly strong and lyrical.  For a work that CAS chose not to publish in his lifetime, this one strikes me as a real standout.

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