Forgetfulness

Read "Forgetfulness" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/198/forgetfulness

This sonnet from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) gets off to a dramatic start right from the opening line: "My life is less than any broken glass . . . ."  One can't help feel for the narrator and his fading memory of a love lost, and CAS ends the poem with some truly stirring lines:


Love is no more, immemorably flown
As any leaf or petal. . . . But to me
The very fields are still, and strange, and lone;
The forest and the garden fail for breath,
Where the dumb heavens hold implacably
An autumn like the marble sleep of death.


"The forest and the garden fail for breath" is one of those near-perfect lines that one finds often in the poetry of CAS, and a powerful echo of the poem's theme.