The Past

This is the second poem with the same title from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) that I have read so far.  The previous poem was an incomplete quatrain, whereas this time we have a complete sonnet:


Drawn hither by the tides of change and chance
          Betwixt the dead past and the future's gloom
          We stand within the present's sun and bloom--
The garden of the living hours.  Yet glance
We ever backward to the past's romance
          Regretting that no wizard may relume
          Its glamour--and the flash of sword and plume--
The Greek and Turk serve only to enhance.
Ay, of the Past is left but memories--
          A wraith of withered roses on its tomb
          That only breathe a ghost of sweet perfume
And yet are eloquent of brilliancies
Long turned to dust, which one at moments sees
Some memory of their former state resume.


This sonnet appears to be the finished version of the work that CAS began with the incomplete quatrain of the same name.  Especially notable are these almost identical lines:

The complete quatrain: 
Naught of the Past is left but memories--
          A wreath of withered roses on its tomb
          That, keeping yet a ghost of their perfume

From the sonnet: 
Ay, of the Past is left but memories--

          A wraith of withered roses on its tomb

          That only breathe a ghost of sweet perfume

Moreover, the longer sonnet version incorporates most of the text of "The Present", another quatrain by CAS that I read earlier.

In reading through the Hippocampus Press edition of CAS' complete poetry, this is the first chance I've had to compare earlier versions with later, more complete versions of poems.    Most notable is that the text of the related quatrain "The Future" has disappeared entirely, which makes sense since this present poem is about "The Past".  But it's interesting to see how CAS took those three related quatrains, kept some ideas and discarded others, and then produced a new poem from those elements.

The incomplete quatrain called "The Past" impressed me with the distilled idea of lingering memories.  This sonnet embellishes that notion quite a bit, and the closing sestet (which basically incorporates that earlier quatrain entire) is especially interesting:

Ay, of the Past is left but memories--
          A wraith of withered roses on its tomb
          That only breathe a ghost of sweet perfume
And yet are eloquent of brilliancies
Long turned to dust, which one at moments sees
Some memory of their former state resume.

Here CAS has retained the concept of lingering memories, but fleshed out his presentation.  For me as a reader, the earlier, shorter version was more powerful, using brevity to achieve focus and directness.  In the sestet quoted above, the additional lines wrapping the original text don't seem to add much, other than building out the structure of a sonnet.

CAS is best known for longer epic poems in blank verse, such as "Nero" and "The Hashish-Eater".  What is interesting in comparing the variant versions of the "The Past" and "The Present" is to see how the shorter, standalone works had an effectiveness that is somewhat muted by the verbosity of the sonnet version of "The Past".  This shows me that CAS was quite effective working in shorter poetic forms, and I'm looking forward to his use of the haiku form which I'll encounter among his more mature verses.