Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Song of the Bacchic Bards

This poem from Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) was unpublished is his lifetime, and is not available on The Eldritch Dark, so here's the complete text:    


O crown us with laurels, unbung the barrels,
Though the stars decline
We'll souse like devils in Plutonian revels
Till two moons shine.

Oh, let not the chorus of satyrs outroar us,
Vaunting the vine, 
While, shedding their panties, the shameless Bacchantes
Get tanked on our wine.

May the pale water-drinker, the Puritan stinker
With snoot cyanine,
Be filled through a funnel with a ceaseless runnel
Of green sea-brine.

May Bacchus his pards devour the bards
Of a tuneless line,
The foals of wild asses who fart on Parnassus 
At the Muses nine.

By Rabelais' bottle, we'll hang and we'll throttle
With the grape's tough twine,
The horse's katitty who sings a dumb ditty
Called sweet Adeline.

Then bring us fresh laurels, unbung new barrels,
Though the world decline,
We'll souse like demons with Plutonian lemans
Till two suns shine.


"Song of the Bacchic Bards" feels like the creation of an artist blowing off some steam, perhaps after having imbibed just a bit!  It certainly doesn't rank amongst CAS' greatest poems, but the unpolished nature of these lines is a lot of fun anyway.

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