Saturday, September 1, 2018

Ode on the Future of Song


This is another poem unpublished during the life of Clark Ashton Smith (CAS), so let's get started with the text itself:


As yet yon stars are silver-faint,
Yea, wan as the beginning dreams
That fill the increasing gloom of sleep;
But soon their gleams
Shall utterly possess and paint
Our night with lusters of the further deep,
Yea, even as slumber's outer-space
Gives dreams unto the mind's far inward-place.

To me, who stand
Upon the threshold of the future's song
The brightening of its dreams,
As now within a morn of stars, it seems
That these shall be
Not less effulgent, beautiful, nor strong
Than those which in the Past's illumined land
Shone the fulfillment and the prophecy
Of song that was and song to come.
For, simple and as complex as the day,
Shall song, which stands coeval with the stars,
Fade from the skies of Time?
Not till the stars are dumb,
The springs of morn run dry, and snow and rime
A strength to stay
And bind the sun with bars!
Hath light grown dull
Since yesteryear?


This is great stuff.  In these lines, CAS is really celebrating the art of poetry and the potential future of that art.  His confidence in the medium of poetry is boundless:


Shall song, which stands coeval with the stars,
Fade from the skies of Time?
Not till the stars are dumb,
The springs of morn run dry, and snow and rime
A strength to stay
And bind the sun with bars!


I read the "Ode on the Future of Song" as an artistic manifesto, and a bold statement from the teenage Clark Ashton Smith.  The fact that this poem was unpublished in his lifetime makes me wonder if, in retrospect, he found it a little too brash.  If so, that would be a shame, since no artist should doubt the power of their work if they are capable and committed, and CAS was certainly both of those things.

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