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Odes and Sonnets-Clark Ashton Smith · Pushing to the Front

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  Speaker 1: Preface of Odes and Sonnets, written by Clark Ashton Smith.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Amy Graymore. Odes and
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  Speaker 1: Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith. Preface. The tendency of modern
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  Speaker 1: poetry is against it, and the gaunt muse of these
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  Speaker 1: lonesome latter years stammers with a greater facility than marks
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  Speaker 1: her singing. So many, however, are congenitally opaque to the
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  Speaker 1: soul and inner light of song, and hence able to
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  Speaker 1: view it from only an intellectual standpoint that she does
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  Speaker 1: not lack. Followers of her shambling progress, those devotees of
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  Speaker 1: austerity will find little to appeal to them in the
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  Speaker 1: rich and spacious poems here presented in fact, and even
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  Speaker 1: partial use of the intelligence that is their one asset
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  Speaker 1: will cause them to shrink from the stern conclusions involved
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  Speaker 1: in some of the passages of this book, to turn
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  Speaker 1: from its terrible vistas. Clark Ashton Smith is unlikely to
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  Speaker 1: be afflicted with present day popularity. Nevertheless, one will find
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  Speaker 1: in the sheer imagination of the succeeding pages evidence and
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  Speaker 1: proof of a precocity vast and sublime in its range,
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  Speaker 1: and quite unequaled in English verse. For the greatest of
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  Speaker 1: these poems, most of them, indeed, were written before their
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  Speaker 1: author had attained the age of twenty. At that age
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  Speaker 1: Pope had a certain hard cleverness. Little more, and Rosetti
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  Speaker 1: had written, though not perfected, The Beautiful Blessed Damsel. But
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  Speaker 1: imagine either of them writing a thing at once so
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  Speaker 1: amazingly mature and imaginative as Nero. It is unthinkable. Chatterton
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  Speaker 1: is commonly held up as the criterion of literary precocity,
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  Speaker 1: yet he was, for all his strong personality, a babbling
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  Speaker 1: babe compared to Smith so far as poetry is concerned.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, his poems are mere verse and not poetry.
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  Speaker 1: While in the pages that follow, the discerner of pure
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  Speaker 1: gold will find it in heavy veins beside it. I
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  Speaker 1: can imagine nothing more ephemeral than the aridities and extravagances
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  Speaker 1: of free verse. In the New Treason to Beauty, Clark
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  Speaker 1: Smith has had no hand. Let us be grateful for that,
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  Speaker 1: as the years to come will be grateful, And let
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  Speaker 1: California be proud that such a phenomenon exists within her borders.
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  Speaker 1: George Sterling, Bohemian Club, April seventeenth, nineteen eighteen. End of preface.
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  Speaker 2: Nero from Odes's Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith read for
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  Speaker 2: LibriVox dot Org by Larry Wilson. This room that was
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  Speaker 2: the toil of many men, the consummation of laborious years,
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  Speaker 2: fulfillments crown to visions of the dead. An image of
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  Speaker 2: the wide desire of kings is made my darkling dreams, effulgency,
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  Speaker 2: fuel of vision, brief embodiment of wandering will, and wastage
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  Speaker 2: of the strong, fierce ecstasy of one tremendous hour when
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  Speaker 2: ages piled on ages were aflame to all the years
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  Speaker 2: behind and years to be. Yet any sunset were as
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  Speaker 2: much as this, save for the music forced by hands
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  Speaker 2: of fire from out the hard, straight silences which bind
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  Speaker 2: dull matter's tongueless mouth, a music pierced with the tense
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  Speaker 2: voice of life, more quick to cry its agony, and
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  Speaker 2: save that. I believed the radiance redder for the blood
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  Speaker 2: of men. Destruction hastes and intensifies the process that his
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  Speaker 2: beauty manifests. Ranges of form unknown before and gives motion
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  Speaker 2: and voice and hue where otherwise bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.
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  Speaker 2: If one create, there is the lengthy toil, the labored
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  Speaker 2: years and days league toward an end, lest the measure
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  Speaker 2: of desire may heap after the sure consuming of all
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  Speaker 2: strength and strain of faculties that other wear were loosed
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  Speaker 2: upon enjoyment, and at last remains to one capacity or
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  Speaker 2: power for pleasure in the thing that he hath made.
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  Speaker 2: But on destruction hangs but little use of time or faculty.
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  Speaker 2: But all is turned to the one purpose, unobstructed, pure
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  Speaker 2: of sensuous rapture and observant joy. And from the intensities
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  Speaker 2: of death and ruin, one draws a heightened and completer life,
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  Speaker 2: and both extends and vindicates himself. I would I were
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  Speaker 2: a god with all the scope of attributes that are
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  Speaker 2: the essential core of Godhead and its visibility. I am
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  Speaker 2: but emperor, and hold a while the power to hasten
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  Speaker 2: death upon its way, and cry a halt to worn
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  Speaker 2: and lagging life for others, but for mine own self
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  Speaker 2: may not delay the one, nor bid the other's speed.
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  Speaker 2: There have been many kings, and they are dead and
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  Speaker 2: have no power in death, save the wind confers upon
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  Speaker 2: their blown brainless dust to vex the eyeballs of posterity.
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  Speaker 2: But were I God, I would be overload of many kings,
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  Speaker 2: and were as breath to guide their dust of destiny.
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  Speaker 2: And were I God exempt from this mortality which clogs
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  Speaker 2: perception and clear exercise of will, what rapture it would
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  Speaker 2: be if but to watch destruction crouching at the back
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  Speaker 2: of time, the tongueless dooms which dog the traveling suns,
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  Speaker 2: the vampires, silence at the breast of worlds, fire without
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  Speaker 2: light that gnaws the base of things, and lets mounting
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  Speaker 2: tide that rosts the stone of fundamental spheres. This were
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  Speaker 2: enough till such time as the dazzled wings of will
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  Speaker 2: came up with powers accession scarcely felt for very suddenness.
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  Speaker 2: Then I would urge the strong contention and conflicting might
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  Speaker 2: of chaos and creation, matching them those immemorial powers, inimical
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  Speaker 2: and all their stars and gulf, subservient dynasts of time
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  Speaker 2: and anarchs of the dark in closer war, reverseless, and
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  Speaker 2: would set new discord at the universal core a Sampson
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  Speaker 2: principle to bring it down in one magnificence of ruin yea,
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  Speaker 2: the monster chaos were unleashed, hound, and all my power
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  Speaker 2: destruction's own right harm. I would exult to mark the
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  Speaker 2: smoldering stars, renew beneath my breath their elder fire, and
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  Speaker 2: feed upon themselves to nothingness. The might of suns, slow paced,
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  Speaker 2: with swinging weight, of myriad worlds, were made at my desire.
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  Speaker 2: One long rapidity of roaring light, through which the voice
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  Speaker 2: of life were audible, and singing of immemorial dead, whose
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  Speaker 2: dust is loosened in viporous wings, with soaring rack of
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  Speaker 2: systems ruinous, and were I weary of the glare of these,
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  Speaker 2: I would tear out the eyes of light and stand
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  Speaker 2: above a chaos of extinguished suns that crowd and grind
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  Speaker 2: and shiver thunderously, lending vast voice and motion, but no
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  Speaker 2: ray to the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs. Thus
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  Speaker 2: would I, my God, had space and speech for its assertion,
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  Speaker 2: and thus pleasure it, hastening the feet of time with
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  Speaker 2: cast of worlds like careless pebbles are with shattered suns,
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  Speaker 2: brightening the aspect of eternity. End of poem. This recording
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  Speaker 2: is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 3: Ode to the Abyss from Odes and Sonnets by Clark
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  Speaker 3: Ashton Smith. Read Felibrivax dot org by Anusha A year
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  Speaker 3: O many gulfed, unalterable, one whose deep sustains far drifting
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  Speaker 3: world and sun. Thou wast ere ever star put out
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  Speaker 3: on thee, and thou shalt be whenever world remains. When
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  Speaker 3: all the Sun's triumphant strength and pride is sunk in voidnous,
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  Speaker 3: and their majestic music wide in vaster silence, rendered mute.
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  Speaker 3: And though God's will were night to dusk the blue
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  Speaker 3: and law to cancel and disperse the tangled tissues of
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  Speaker 3: the universe and mold the suns anew, his might were
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  Speaker 3: impotent to conquer thee o indivisible infinity. Thy darks subdue
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  Speaker 3: all light that treads thee down a space exulting o'er
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  Speaker 3: thy deeps. The cycles die, and lo thy darkness reaps
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  Speaker 3: the flame of mightiest stars. In aon implicating wars, Thou
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  Speaker 3: terrest planets from their place words granite spined to thine
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  Speaker 3: erodents yield their treasures centrally confined in cryps by continental pillars,
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  Speaker 3: sealed what suns and worlds have been Thy prey through
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  Speaker 3: unhorizoned retails of the past. What spheares that now assay
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  Speaker 3: times undimension'd vast shall plunge forgotten to thy gloom at
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  Speaker 3: length with life that cried its query of the night,
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  Speaker 3: to ears with silence filled. What world's unborn shall dare
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  Speaker 3: thy strength girt by a sun's unwearied might and dip
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  Speaker 3: to darkness when the sun is till'd o incontestable abyss?
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  Speaker 3: What light in thine embrace of darkness sleeps? What blaze
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  Speaker 3: of a side real multitude no peopled world is left
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  Speaker 3: to miss? What motion is at rest within thy deeps?
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  Speaker 3: What gires of planets long become thy food, world's unconstrainable
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  Speaker 3: that plunged therein to peace like tempest, worn and crew
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  Speaker 3: forsaken ships and suns that fell to huge and ultimate
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  Speaker 3: slips and lasting gire release? What sound thy gulfs of
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  Speaker 3: silence hold stupendous thunder of the meeting stars and crash
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  Speaker 3: of orbits that diverged with life's thing song are merged.
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  Speaker 3: Thy quietudes enfold pain and trinity as one, and battle
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  Speaker 3: blare of unremembered wars with festal songs sung in the
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  Speaker 3: rooms of ruined spheres and music that belongs to younger,
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  Speaker 3: undiscoverable years. With words of yesterday, Ah, who may stay
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  Speaker 3: thy soundless world, devouring tide O thou, whose hands pluck
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  Speaker 3: out the light of stars our worlds, but as a
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  Speaker 3: fruit for thee may no sufficient bars nor marks inveterate
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  Speaker 3: abide to baffle thy persistency, still and unstriving. Now what
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  Speaker 3: plottest thou within thy universe alteredior deeps? Dark as the
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  Speaker 3: final lull of suns? What new advancement of the night
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  Speaker 3: on citadels of stars? Around whose might thy slow encroachment
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  Speaker 3: runs and crouching silence thunder potent sleeps? And a poem.
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  Speaker 3: This recording is in the public domain. To the Darkness
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  Speaker 3: from Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith readfully revax
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  Speaker 3: dot Org by Anusha a year Thou hast taken the
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  Speaker 3: light of many suns, and they are sealed in the
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  Speaker 3: prison house of gloom, even as candal flames. Hast thou
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  Speaker 3: taken the souls of men with winds from out a
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  Speaker 3: hollow place. They are hid in the abyss as in
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  Speaker 3: a sea, and the gulls are over them, as the
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  Speaker 3: weight of many peaks, as the depth of many seas.
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  Speaker 3: Thy shields are between them and the light. They are
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  Speaker 3: passed its burden and bitterness. The spears of the day
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  Speaker 3: shall not touch them. The chains of the sun shall
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  Speaker 3: not hail them. Forth. Many men there were in the
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  Speaker 3: days that are now of thy realm, that thou hast
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  Speaker 3: sealed with the seal of many deeps. Their feet were
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  Speaker 3: as eagle's wings in the quest of truth. Aye, mightily
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  Speaker 3: they desired her face, hunting her through the lands of life,
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  Speaker 3: as men in the blankness of the waste, that seek
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  Speaker 3: for a buried treasure house of kings. But against them
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  Speaker 3: were the veales that hands may not rend nor sabers peers.
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  Speaker 3: And truth was withheld from them, as a water that
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  Speaker 3: is seen afar at dawn and at noon is lost
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  Speaker 3: in the sand. Before the feet of the traveler, the
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  Speaker 3: world was a barrenness, and the gardens were as the waste.
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  Speaker 3: And they turned them to the advent of the dark,
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  Speaker 3: to the traveling of the land without roads, to the
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  Speaker 3: sailing of the sea that hath no beacons. Why have
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  Speaker 3: they not returned their quest? Hath found end in thee
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  Speaker 3: Or surely they had fared once more to the place
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  Speaker 3: whence they came, as men that have traveled to a
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  Speaker 3: fruitless land. They have looked on thy face, and to
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  Speaker 3: them it is the countenance of truths. Thy silence is
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  Speaker 3: sweeter to them than the voice of love, Thine embrace
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  Speaker 3: more dear than the clasp of the beloved. They are
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  Speaker 3: fed with the emptiness past the vale, and their hunger
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  Speaker 3: is filled. They have found the waters of peace, and
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  Speaker 3: are athirst no more. They know arrest that is deeper
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  Speaker 3: than the gulfs, and whose seal is unbreakable, as the
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  Speaker 3: seal of the void. They sleep the sleep of the suns,
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  Speaker 3: and the vast is a garment unto them and of poem.
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  Speaker 3: This recording is in the public domain. The retribution from
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  Speaker 3: Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith read for lbevakstat
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  Speaker 3: Org by Anusha a year old. Egypt's gods O Cyrus
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  Speaker 3: Amon thought, came on my dream in thunder, and their
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  Speaker 3: feet revealed were as the Levin's fire and heat. The
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  Speaker 3: hosts of Rome, the Arab and the Goths have left
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  Speaker 3: their altars dark, yet stern and wroth in old in
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  Speaker 3: power they stood, whose wings were fleet and mighty, as
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  Speaker 3: with strength of storms, that meet in mingled foam of
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  Speaker 3: clouds and ocean froths above my dream with arch of
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  Speaker 3: dreaded wings, in judgment and in sentence of what crime
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  Speaker 3: I know not, the God's outcast of time. They passed,
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  Speaker 3: and lo, a plague of darkness fell, unsleeping and accursed,
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  Speaker 3: with nameless things and dreams that stood the ministers of
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  Speaker 3: hell end a poem. This recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 3: Satan Unrepentant, from Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith
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  Speaker 3: read for the pevakstan Org by Anusha Ayeared lost from
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  Speaker 3: those archangelic thrones, that star fadeless and fixed Heaven's light
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  Speaker 3: of azure bliss, rejected of his splendor and depressed beyond
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  Speaker 3: the births of the first sun, and lower than the
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  Speaker 3: last stars. Decline, I here endure a based majestic, fallen,
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  Speaker 3: beautiful and unregretful in the doubted dark, throneless that gratens
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  Speaker 3: chaos sward, albeit from chanting stars that throng the nave
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  Speaker 3: of night. Lost echoes wonder here and of his praise
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  Speaker 3: with ringing moons for symbols dinned afar and shouted from
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  Speaker 3: the flaming mouths of suns, the shadows of impalpable blank deeps,
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  Speaker 3: deep upon deep, accumulate close down around my head, consented,
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  Speaker 3: while above, in the lit loftier blue, star after star
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  Speaker 3: spins endless orbits betwixt me and heaven, and at my
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  Speaker 3: feet mysterious chaos breaks abrupt, immeasurable round His throne now
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  Speaker 3: throbs the rhythmic resonance of suns, incessant, perfect music, infinite,
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  Speaker 3: I throneless, hear the discords of the dark and roar
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  Speaker 3: of ruin uncreate than which some vast cacophony of dragons
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  Speaker 3: heard in wasted worlds were purer melody the universe. His
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  Speaker 3: tyranny constrains turns on in old and consummated gulfs, the
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  Speaker 3: stars that wield his judgment weight at hand, and in
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  Speaker 3: new deeps, apocalyptic suns prepare his coming, lo his mighty
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  Speaker 3: whim to make, and Marh goes forth enormously in knights
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  Speaker 3: and constellations darkness. Hears enrageth suns that bellow down the
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  Speaker 3: deep God's ravenous and insatiable will, And he is strong
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  Speaker 3: with change, and rideth forths in whirlwind, clothed with thunders
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  Speaker 3: and with doom to the red stars. God's throne is
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  Speaker 3: reared of change. Its mirrored and successive hands support like music,
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  Speaker 3: his omnipotence that fails if mercy, or if justice interrupt
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  Speaker 3: the sequence of that tyranny begun upon injustice, and doomed evermore,
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  Speaker 3: to stand thereby I who with will not less than
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  Speaker 3: his but lesser strength opposed to him, this unsubmissive brow
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  Speaker 3: and lifted mind he holds remote in nullity and knight doubtful,
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  Speaker 3: between old chaos and the deeps betrayed by time to vassilage.
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  Speaker 3: Methinks all tyrants fear whom they may not destroy, And
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  Speaker 3: I that am of essence, one with his, though less
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  Speaker 3: in measure, he may not destroy, and but withstands in
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  Speaker 3: gulfs of dark suspense, a secret dread forever. For God
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  Speaker 3: knows this quiet will irrevocably set against his own, and
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  Speaker 3: this mine old revolt, yet stubborn and confirmed eternally, and
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  Speaker 3: with the hatred, born of fear and fed ever thereby
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  Speaker 3: God hates me, and his gaze sees the bright menace
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  Speaker 3: of mine eyes afar through midnight, and the innumerable blaze
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  Speaker 3: of servile suns, lo strong in tyranny, the despot trembles
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  Speaker 3: that I stand a post for fain am I to
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  Speaker 3: hush the anguished cries of substance, broken on the racks
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  Speaker 3: of change, of matter tortured into life. And God, knowing this,
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  Speaker 3: dreads evermore some huge mishap, that in the visuals of omnipotence,
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  Speaker 3: once careless, I shall enter Heaven or he himself with
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  Speaker 3: weight of some unwonted act, thoughtless pertub his balanced tyranny
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  Speaker 3: to mine advance of watchful aspiration with rumored thunder and
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  Speaker 3: enormous groan, burden of sound that Heaven's overborne, let slip
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  Speaker 3: from deep to deep, even to this where climb the
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  Speaker 3: huge cacophonies of chaos. God's universe moves on. Confirmed in pride,
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  Speaker 3: in patient, majesty, serene and strong, I wait the dreamt inevitable,
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  Speaker 3: hour fulfilled of orbits ultimate, when God, whether through his
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  Speaker 3: mischance or mine own deed, or rise of other and
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  Speaker 3: extremer strength, shall vanish, and the lightened universe no more
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  Speaker 3: remember him than silence does an ancient thunder. I know
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  Speaker 3: not if these mine all indomitable eyes shall see a
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  Speaker 3: maimed and dwindled Godhead cast among the stars of his
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  Speaker 3: creating and beneath the unnumbered rush of swift and shining
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  Speaker 3: feet trodden into night, or mark the fiery breath of
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  Speaker 3: his infuriate sons blaze forth upon enscort that coarsened essence,
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  Speaker 3: or his flame drawn through the windy halls of nothingness,
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  Speaker 3: A mightier comet roar and redden down, portentous unto chaos.
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  Speaker 3: I but wait in strong, majestic patience, equable that hour
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  Speaker 3: of consummation and of doom, of justice and rebellion justified.
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  Speaker 3: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Alexandrines from Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith, read
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  Speaker 1: for LibriVox dot org. Knowing the wariness of dreams and
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  Speaker 1: days and nights, the great and grievous vanity of joy
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  Speaker 1: and pain, for loves that pass were languors, infinite remain fervors,
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  Speaker 1: and dead long despairs and desperate brief delights, Knowing how
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  Speaker 1: in the witless brains of them that were the drowsy,
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  Speaker 1: wiving worm, hath prospered, and Hath died, Knowing that evermore
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  Speaker 1: by moon and sun abide the standing glooms, mate stagnant
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  Speaker 1: in the sepulcher knowing the vaclent leaves that tremble, flame
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  Speaker 1: and fall, the sweetly wasting rose, the dawns and stars
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  Speaker 1: that wan. Knowing these things, the desolate heart and soul
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  Speaker 1: are fain of the one perfect sleep which filleth foldeth all.
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  Speaker 1: And a poem. This recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 2: Exotique from Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith, read
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: for LibriVox dot Org by Larry Wilson. Thy mouth is
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  Speaker 2: like a crimson orchid flower, whence perfume, and whence poison rise,
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  Speaker 2: unseen to moons, a swim in iris or in green,
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  Speaker 2: or mixed with mourning in an eastern bower, Thou shouldst
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  Speaker 2: have known in Amaranthine isles the sunsets hewed like fire
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  Speaker 2: of frankincense, or the long noons and fraught with redolence,
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  Speaker 2: the mingled spicery of purple miles, thy breasts where blood
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  Speaker 2: and molten marble flow, thy warm white limbs, thy loins
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  Speaker 2: of tropic snow. These these by which desire is grown divine,
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  Speaker 2: were made for dreams in mystic palaces, for love and sleep,
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  Speaker 2: and slow voluptuousness, and summer seas of foam like foaming wine.
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  Speaker 2: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Ave At g Valais from Poems and Sonnets by Clark
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  Speaker 2: Ashton Smith, read for LibriVox dot Org by Larry Wilson.
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  Speaker 2: Black Dreams, the pale and sorrowful desire, whose eyes have
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: looked on lethe and have seen deep in the sliding
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: ebbentide's serene, their own vain light, inverted ashen fire, with
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: wasted lilies, late and languishing autumnal roses, blind with rain,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: slow foam from desert, sinking seas, with honeycomb of aconite
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: and poppy. These I bring with my bitter barren love
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: to THEE, and from the grievous springs of memory far
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: in the great marima of my heart. I proffer THEE
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: to drink, and on thy mouth with the one kiss
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: wherein we met in part, leave fire and dust from
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: quinchless leagues of drought. End of poem. This recording is
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: in the public domain.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: The Ministers of Law from Odes and Sonnets by Clark
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Ashton Smith read for LibriVox dot org. The glories and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the perils of thy day are one, o man. Thou
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: goest to thine end with powers and for a little,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Thou dost wind with martialed majesties upon their way, but thee,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the dread necessities betray that nurse, and fearful splendors that befriend,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and thee shall alien dominations rend deemest the triumph of
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the worlds to stay, or step by step eternal, unsurpassed,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: stride with the sons upon their road of awe. Thou
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: travelst brief ways that end and sink, urged by the
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: hurrying planets and the vast, prone, rushing constellations of the law,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: thunder and press behind thee at the brink and of poem.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: The Refuge of Beauty from Odes and Sonnets by Clark
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: Ashton Smith, read for Libevax dot Org by Anusha A
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: year from regions of the Sun's half dreamt decay all day,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: the cruel rain strikes darkly down, and from the night
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: thy fatal stars shall frown. Beauty, Wilt thou abide this
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: night and day roofless at portal's dark and desperate wilt
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: thou a shelter, unrefused, implore, and past the tomb's too
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: hospitable door, evade thy lover in eluding hate. Alas for
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: what have I to offer? Thee chill hals of mind,
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: dank crooms of memory, where thou shalt dwell with woes
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: and thoughts infirm this rumor thronged citadel of sense, trembling
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: before some nameless imminence and fellow guestship with the glutless worm.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: The Crucifixion of Eras from Odes and Sonnets by Clark
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Ashton Smith read Folibebags dot Org by Anusha A year
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: because of THEE immortal love hath died. Because thy wilful
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: heart will not believe Thy hands and mine a thorny
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: crown must weave a thorny crown for love the crucified.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Behold how beautiful the limbs that bleed, the limbs that bleed,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: O stubborn heart for us. Still are the lids so softly,
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: tremulous and mute the mouth of thy eternal need. Though
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: this thy fearful lips would now deny. Love is divine
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: and cannot wholly die. Draw forth the nails thy tender
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: hands have driven, and we will know the mercy infinite
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: will find redemption in our own delight and in each
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: other's heart, the only heaven and of poem. This recording
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: is in the public domain.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: The Harlot of the World from Odes and Sonnets by
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Clark Ashton Smith read for lebrevarchx dot org O life Thou,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: harlot huberguilest all beautiful in thy house, the gorgeous world,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: world abidest thou, where powers, pinion, furroled, and flying splendors
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: follow to thy call. Innumerous like the stars or like
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the dust. Nations and monarchs were thy thralls of yore
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: until the graves old womb for evermore, hast thou betrayed
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the passion and the lust fair as the moon of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: summer is thy face and mystical, with cloudiness of hair.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Only an eye sou bornless by delight, shall find within
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: thy phosphorescent gaze those caverns of corruption and despair, where
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the worm toileth in the charnel night and of poem.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Belated Love from Odes and Sonnets by Clarkashton Smith readvolibobox
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: dot org by A nutsha Ayeur Ah woe is me
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: for love hath Lain asleep, had lain too long in
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: some morphian clothes, till on his dreaming wings the ruined
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: rose fell lightly, and the rose red leaves were deep.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Alas alas, for love is over late, far wandering alone.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: We know not where he found the white and purple
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: poppies fair, nor heard the summer pass importunate, Ah, love,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: can we forgive thy loitering the golden summer as a
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: dream foregone is changed till in our eyes the ashen
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: dawn of autumn kindles we have heard thy wing, But
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: with a sound of sighing heart, and heart in our
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: own size we hear thy wing. Depart end of poem.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: This recording is in the public domain. The Meduse of
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Despair from Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith read
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: Fulbebakstadt org by Anusha A year I may not mask
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: forever with the grace of wowen flowers, thine eyes of
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: staring stone. Ere fatally I front thee fully known, the
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: guarded horror of thy haggard face, thy visage Carvin, from
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: the heart long dead of some white frozen star. Ere
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: thou hast tound my life to thine own likeness and
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: confound depart and curse more kindred things instead triumphant through
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: what realms of elder doom, where even the swat vans
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: of time are stunned. Seek thou, some fit Sumerian citadel
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: and mighty cities desolate, unsunn'd, whose walls of horrent and
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: enormous gloom make sharp the horizon of the light of Hell.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Memnon at Midnight from Odes and Sonnets by Clarkashton Smith
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: read fulibevax dot Org by Anusha A year dedicated to
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: mister Albert M. Bender. Me thought upon the tomb encumbered shore,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: I stood of Egypt's lone monarchal stream, and saw immortal
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Memnon throned, supreme in gloom as of that Memphian Knight
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: of Yore, fold upon fold, purpureal. He wore beneath the
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: starborn canopy, extreme carven of silence and colossal dream, where
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: waters flowed like sleep for evermore lo in the darkness
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: thick with dust of years, how many a ghostly god
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: around his throne, with thronging winds that were forgotten fames
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: stood ere the dawn restored to ancient ears, the long
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: withholding thunder of their names and music stilled to monumental stone.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: And of odes and sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith