The Star-Treader & Other Poems: 'A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams''

By Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith was born on January 13th 1893 in Long Valley, California.

Smith achieved local recognition early in his life for his poems in the vein of Swinburne. He is grouped with the West Coast Romantics along with Joaquin Miller, Sterling, and Nora May French and was often cited as ‘The Last of the Great Romantics’ and ‘The Bard of Auburn’.

As a writer Smith is commonly thought of as one of the ‘big three of Weird Tales alongside Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft’. His long and literary friendship with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecroft’s passing in 1937. Smith’s beautifully rich, full and ornate vocabulary along with it’s cosmic perspective and rough humour were all evidence that, as it was put, "nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse."

Smith said of his writing style that: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation."

Clark Ashton Smith, at the age of 68, died on 14th August 1961 in Pacific Grove, California.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839673627

Book preview

The Star-Treader & Other Poems by Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith was born on January 13th 1893 in Long Valley, California. 

Smith achieved local recognition early in his life for his poems in the vein of Swinburne. He is grouped with the West Coast Romantics along with Joaquin Miller, Sterling, and Nora May French and was often cited as ‘The Last of the Great Romantics’ and ‘The Bard of Auburn’.

As a writer Smith is commonly thought of as one of the ‘big three of Weird Tales alongside Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft’.  His long and literary friendship with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecroft’s passing in 1937. Smith’s beautifully rich, full and ornate vocabulary along with it’s cosmic perspective and rough humour were all evidence that, as it was put, nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse.

Smith said of his writing style that: My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.

Clark Ashton Smith, at the age of 68, died on 14th August 1961 in Pacific Grove, California. 

Index of Contents

NERO

CHANT TO SIRIUS

THE STAR-TREADER

THE MORNING POOL

THE NIGHT FOREST

THE MAD WIND

SONG TO OBLIVION

MEDUSA

ODE TO THE ABYSS

THE SOUL OF THE SEA

THE BUTTERFLY

THE PRICE

THE MYSTIC MEANING

ODE TO MUSIC

THE LAST NIGHT

ODE ON IMAGINATION

THE WIND AND THE MOON

LAMENT OF THE STARS

THE MAZE OF SLEEP

THE WINDS

THE MASK OF FORSAKEN GODS

A SUNSET

THE CLOUD-ISLANDS

THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS

THE SUMMER MOON

THE RETURN OF HYPERION

LETHE

ATLANTIS

THE UNREVEALED

THE ELDRITCH DARK

THE CHERRY SNOWS

FAIRY LANTERNS

NIRVANA

THE NEMESIS OF SUNS

WHITE DEATH

RETROSPECT AND FORECAST

SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE

THE SONG OF A COMET

THE RETRIBUTION

TO THE DARKNESS

A DREAM OF BEAUTY

THE DREAM BRIDGE

A LIVE-OAK LEAF

PINE NEEDLES

TO THE SUN

THE FUGITIVES

AVERTED MALEFICE

THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES

A DEAD CITY

THE SONG OF THE STARS

COPAN

A SONG OF DREAMS

THE BALANCE

SATURN

FINIS

NERO

This Rome, that was the toil of many men,

The consummation of laborious years—

Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,

And image of the wide desire of kings—

Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,

Fuel of vision, brief embodiment

Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong

Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour,

When ages piled on ages were a flame

To all the years behind, and years to be.

Yet any sunset were as much as this,

Save for the music forced by hands of fire

From out the hard strait silences which bind

Dull Matter's tongueless mouth—a music pierced

With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry

Its agony—and save that I believed

The radiance redder for the blood of men.

Destruction hastens and intensifies

The process that is Beauty, manifests

Ranges of form unknown before, and gives

Motion and voice and hue where otherwise

Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.

If one create, there is the lengthy toil;

The laboured years and days league tow'rd an end

Less than the measure of desire, mayhap,

After the sure consuming of all strength,

And strain of faculties that otherwhere

Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last

Remains to one capacity nor power

For pleasure in the thing that he hath made.

But on destruction hangs but little use

Of time or faculty, but all is turned

To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure,

Of sensuous rapture and observant joy;

And from the intensities of death and ruin,

One draws a heightened and completer life,

And both extends and vindicates himself.

I would I were a god, with all the scope

Of attributes that are