December

Read "December" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/120/december

This poem of the passing seasons is colored with the grim beauty that Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) could express so well.  The closing stanza is practically a complete poem in itself:


For here no zephyr grieves
To tell the year's dead dream;
And down the pine-lulled stream
Lost memories drift and loiter with the leaves.


The very last line of that stanza (and of the entire poem) repeats the image of leaves that was introduced in the first line: "From the sad leaves withdrawn," providing a circular reference that gives the poem a certain ongoing animation that lasts beyond the words themselves.