Consolation

Read "Consolation" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/100/consolation

Certain poems from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) really seem as though they are expressions of the artist's personal views, and I think  "Consolation" falls easily into that category.  The opening stanza suggests turning away from worldly affairs:


Forget, forget, and be not sorrowful at all:
Ah, tend no more, in gardens of the terrene years,
This wormwood flowering tall with thy mellifluous tears.


The following two stanzas wash the reader in the incredible mysteries of the poet's imaginative universe, with the third stanza really packing a punch:


Be glad: though here the skies are like a leaden wall;
For still in Saturn, from their isle septentrion,
The black swans fly to seek the jungles of the sun.


That last line is a wonderful piece of poetry all by itself: "The black swans fly to seek the jungles of the sun."  That one line is so rich with the fantastic potential of language and dreams that it echoes in my mind long after my first reading of "Consolation".