Latest / F. Scott Fitzgerald Classics Podcast / Star-Treader and Other Poems-Clark Ashton Smith

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Star-Treader and Other Poems-Clark Ashton Smith · F. Scott Fitzgerald Classics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Section one of The Star Treader and Other Poems by
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Clark Ashton Smith. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or volunteer,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. This has been read by
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Rosslyn Carlile. The Star Treader and Other Poems by Clark
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Ashton Smith. NERO this room that was the toil of
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: many men, the consummation of laborious years, fulfillment's crown, to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: visions of the dead, and image of the wide desire
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: of kings is made by darkling dreams, efulgency, fuel of vision,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: brief embodiment of wondering well and wasted, of the strong,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: fierce ecstasy of one tremendous hour when ages pile on ages,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: where a flame to all the years behind and years
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: to be. Yet any sunset were as much as this,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: save for the music forced by hands of fire from out,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the hard, straight silences which bind dull matter's tongueless mouth,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and music pierced with the tense voice of life, more
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: quick to cry its agony, and save that, I believed
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the radiance Reader, for the blood of men. Destruction hastens
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and intensifies the process that is, beauty manifests ranges of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: form unknown before, and gives motion and voice and hue
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: where otherwise bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all. If one create,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: there is the lengthy toil, the labored years and days,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: league towered and end less than the measure of desire.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Mayhap after the sure conceum uming of all strength and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: strain of faculties that otherwise were loosed upon enjoyment, and
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: at last remains to one capacity or power for pleasure
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: in the thing that he hath made. But on destruction
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: hangs but little use of time or faculty. But all
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: is turned to the one purpose, unobstructed, pure of sensuous
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: rapture and observant joy, And from the intensities of death
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and ruin, one draws a heightened and completer life, and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: both extends and vindicates himself. I would I wear a
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: God with all the scope of attributes that are the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: essential core of god Head and its visibility. I am
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: but Temperor, and hold awhile the power to hasten death
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: upon his way, and cry a halt to worn and
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: lagging life for others, but for mine own self. May
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: not delay the one nor bid the other speed. There
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: have been many kings, and they are dead and have
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: no power in death, save what the wind confers upon
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: their blown and bringless dust to vex the eyeballs of posterity.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: But where I a god, I would be overlord of
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: many kings, and where as breath to guide their dust
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of destiny. And where I a god exempt from this
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: mortality which cloaks perception and clear exercise of will, What
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: rapture it would be if but to watch destruction crouching
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: at the back of time, the tongueless dooms which dog
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the traveling suns, the vampire silence at the breast of worlds,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: fire without light that gnaws the base of things, and
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: leaves mounting tide that rots the stone of fundamental spheres.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: This were enough till such time as the dazzled wings
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of well came up with powers accession scarcely felt for
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: very suddenness. Then would I urge the strong contention and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: conflicting might of chaos and creation, matching them those immemorial
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: powers enimical and all their stars and gulfs, subservient dynasts
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of time and anarchs of the dark. In closer war,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: reverseless and would set new discord at the universal core,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: as Samson principle, to bring it down in one magnificence
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: of ruin yea, the monster chaos were mine, unleashed hound,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and all my power destruction's own right arm. I would
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: exult to mark the smoldering stars, renew beneath my breath
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: their elder fire, and feed upon themselves to nothingness the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: might of suns, slow paced with swis weight of myriad worlds,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: where made at my desire, one long rapidity of roaring light,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: through which the voice of life were audible, and singing
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: of the immemorial dead, whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: with soaring rack of system's ruinous, And where I weary
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of the glare of these, I would tear out the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: eyes of light and stand above a chaos of extinguished
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: suns that crowd and grind and shiver thunderously, lending vast
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: voice and motion, but no ray to the stretched silence
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of the blinded gulfs. Thus would I give my godhead
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: space and speech for its assertion, and thus pleasure it,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: hastening the feet of time with casts of worlds like
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: careless pebbles, or with shattered suns brightening the aspect of eternity.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Chant To Sirius by Clark Ashton Smith readfulibrivox dot Org
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: by Canmasters. What mights retard thee, O Sirius, Thy light
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: is as a spear, and thou penetratest them as a
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: warrior that stabbeth his foe, even to the center of
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: his life. Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs. They
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: form a bridge thereover that shall endure till the links
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: of the universe are unfastened and drop apart, and all
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the gulfs are one dissevered by suns no longer. How
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: strong art thou in thy place, Thou stridest thine orbit,
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  Speaker 2: and the darkness shakes beneath thee as a road that
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: is trodden by an army. Thou art a god in
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: thy temple that is hollowed with light in the night
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: of infinitude, and whose floor is the lower void. Thy
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: worlds are as priests and ministers. Therein Thou furrowest space
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: even as a husbandman, and sowest it with alien seed.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: It beareth alien fruits, and these are thy testimony, even
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: as the crops of his fields are the testimony of
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: an husbandman. End of poem. This recording is in the
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: public domain.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: The Star Tretder by Clark Ashton Smith read for the
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: bribox dot Org by Marianne Spiegel. One. A voice cried
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: to me in a dawn of dreams, saying, make haste.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: The webs of death and birth are brushed away, and
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: all the threads of earth, Where to the breaking spaceward
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: gleams thine ancient pathway of the suns, whose flame is
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: part of thee and deeps outreach immutably, whose largeness runs
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: through all thy spirit's mystery. Go forth and tread unharmed
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: the blaze of stars, where through thou camest in old
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: days piers without fear, each vast whose hugeness crushed thee
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: not within the past. A hand strikes off the chains
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: of time. A hand swings back the door of years,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: now fall Earth's bonds of gladness and of tears, and
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: opens the straight dream to space sublime. Two who rides
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: a dream, what hand shall stay, what I shall note
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: or measure? Meet his passage on a purpose fleet, the
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: thread and weaving of his way it caught me from
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: the clasping world and swept beyond the brink of scentse
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: My soul was flung and poised, and whirled like to
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: a planet, chained and hurled with solar lightning, strong and tense,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: swift as communicated rays that leap from severed suns, a
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: gloom within whose waste no suns illume. The winged dream
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: fulfills its ways through years, reversed and lit again. I
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: followed that unending chain, wherein the suns are links of
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: light retraced through lineal ordered spheres, the twisting of the
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: threads of years, in weavings wrought of noon and night,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: through stars and deeps. I watched the dream unroll those
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: folds that form the raiment of the soul. Three, in
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: kindling dawns of memory, each sun had radiance to reloom,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: a sealed, disused, and darkened room within the soul's immensity.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Their alien ciphers shone and lit. I understood what each
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: had writ upon my spirit's scroll. Again, I wore mine
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: ancient lives and knew the freedom and the GUIDs that
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: formed and marked my soul. Four I delved in each
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: forgotten mind, the units that had builded me, whose deepnesses
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: before were blind and formless as infinity, knowing again each
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: former world, from planet unto planet world, through gulfs that
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: mightily divide, like to an intervital sleep. One world I
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: found where souls abide like winds that rest upon a rose.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: There too they creep to loose all burden of old woes.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: And one I knew, where warp of pain is woven
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: in the soul's attire. And one wherewith new loveliness is strengthened,
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: beauty's old in chain, soft as a sound and keen
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: as fire in light, no darkness may depress. Five where
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: no terrestrial dreams had trod, my visions entered undismayed, and
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: life her hidden realms displayed to me as to a
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: curious god. Where colored suns of systems triplicate bestow on planets,
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  Speaker 3: weird ineffable green light that orbs them like an outer sea,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: and large auroral noons that alternate with skies like sunset
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  Speaker 3: held without a bait. Life's touch renewed incomprehensibly, the strains
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: of mirth and grief's harmonious spell. Dead passions like to stars,
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: ReLit shone in the gloom of ways forgot, where crownless
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: gods in darkness sit. The day was full on altars
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  Speaker 3: hot I heard once more a part of it, the
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: central music of the Pleiades, And to Alcyone, my soul
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: swayed with the stars that her own songs control, unchallenged glad.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I trod a revenant in world's edenic longly lost, or
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: walked in spheres that sing to these or space no
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: light has crossed diverse as Hell's mad antiphany uptossed to
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Heaven's angelic chant six What vasts the dream went out
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: to find? I seemed beyond the world's recall, in gulfs
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: where darkness is a wall to render strong, and Terry's blind.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: In unimagined spheres, I found the sequence of my beings
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: round some life, where firstling meed of song, the strange,
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: imperishable leaf was placed on brows that starry, grief had crowned,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: and pain anointed long some avatar, where love sang like
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: the last great stone at morn ere death filled all
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: its sky. Some life in fresher years, unworn upon a
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: world whereof peace was a robe like to the calms
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: that lie on pools aglow with latter spring. There Life's
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: pellucid surface took clear image of all things, nor shook
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: till touch of Death's obscuring wing some earlier awakening in
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: pristine years, when giant strife of forces darkly whirled first
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: forged the thing called life, hot from the furnace of
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: the Sun's upon the anvil of a world seven. Thus
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: I knew those anterior ones whose lives in mine were
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: blent till lo my dream that held a night where
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: regal sends. No word of might was emptied of the
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: trodden stars, and dwindled to the Sun's extent. The brain's
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: familiar prism bars and raiment of the sorrow and the
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: mirth wrought by the shuttles intricate of Earth. End of poem.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: This recording is in the public domain.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: The Night Forest by Clark Ashton Smith read forlibrivox dot
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Org by Canmasters. Incumbent seemingly on the jagged points of
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: peaks that end the visible west, the rounded moon yet
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: floods the valleys hitherwood with fall of torrential light air
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: from the overmost aggressive mountain Cusp. She slip to the
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: lower dark, But here on an eastward slope pointed and
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: thick with its pine, the forest scarcely remembers her light
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: that is gone as a vision or ecstasy, too poignant
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: and perilous for duration, with drawn in what darker web
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: or dimension of dream?
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: I know not?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: In silence, preoccupied and sulemnest rectitude, the pine's uprear, and
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: no sigh, for the rapture of moonlight past comes from
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: their bosom of boughs, far in their secrecy, I stand,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: and the burden of dusk, dull but at times made
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: keen with tingle of fragrances falls on me as a
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: veil between my soul and the world. What vale of trance,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: O pines divides you from my soul that I feel
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: but enter not? Your distances of dream are strange, imperative
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: sense of world, deep mystery that shakes from out your bows,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a fragrance yet more keen pressing upon the mind, the
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: wind shall question you of the dream I may not gain,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: and all its somberness and depth immeasurable shall tremble away
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: in sound of speech, not understood that my heart must
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: break to hear. End of poem. This recording is in
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the public domain. The Mad Wind by Clark Ashton Smith
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: read forlibrivox dot org by Canmasters. What hast thou seen,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: o wind of beauty or of terror? Surpassing denied to
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: us that with precipitate, wings mad and ecstatical, thou spurnest
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: the hollows and trees that offer thee refuge of peace,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: and findest within the sky no safety nor respite from
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: the memory of thy vision. End of poem. This recording
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: is in the public domain. The Morning Pool by Clark
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Ashton Smith read for LibriVox dot org by Canmasters. All
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: night the pool held mysteries, vague depths of night that
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: lay in dream, where phantoms of the pale white stars
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: wandered with darkness, tangled gleam. And now it holds the
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: limpid light and shadeless azure of the skies, wherein like
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: some enclasped gem, the morning's golden glamor lies. End of poem.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: This recording is in the public domain. The Soul of
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: the Sea by Clark Ashton Smith read forlibrivox dot org
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: by Canmasters. A wind comes in from the sea and
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: rolls through the hollow dark like loud, tempestuous waters, as
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: the swift recurrent tide. It pours adown the sky and
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: rears at the cliffs of night, uppiled against the vast,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: like the soul of the sea, hungry, unsatisfied with raven
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: of shores and of ships, come forth on the land
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: to seek new prey of tideless coasts. It raves made
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: hoarse with desire, and the sounds of the night are
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: dumb with the sound of its passing. End of poem.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: This recording is in the public domain. Sung to Oblivion
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: by Clark Ashton Smith read forlibrivox dot Org by Canmasters.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Art thou more fair, for all the beauty gathered up
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: in thee as gold and gems within some lightless sea,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: For light of flowers and bloom of tinted air, art
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: thou more fair, Art thou more strong? For powers that
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: turn to thee as unto sleep, For world and star
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: that find thy ways more deep than light may tread
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: too wearisome for sung, art thou more strong, Nay thou
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: art bare, for power and beauty on thine impotence bestowed
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: by fruitful time's magnificence. For fruit of all things strong
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: and bloom of fair, Thou still art bare. End of poem.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: This recording is in the public domain. Mid User by
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Clark Ashton Smith read for LibriVox dot org by Canmasters
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: as drear and barren, as the glooms of death, it
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: lies a windless land of livid dawns, nude to a
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: desolate firmament with hills that seem the fleshless earth's out,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: jutting ribs and planes whose face is crusted and riveled,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: deep with gullies twisting like a serpent's track. The leprous
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: touch of death is on its stones, where for he
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: is token visible. The head is thrown upon a heap
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: of monstrous rocks, grotesque in everlasting ugliness, within a hill
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: ravine that splits athwart like some old, hideous and unhealing scar.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes that mingle with
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: her hair the gorgan rains. Her eyes are clouds wherein
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Death's lightnings lurk. Yet even as men that seek the
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: glance of life, the gazers come, where coiled and serpent swift,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: those leavens wait as round an altar base. Her victims
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: lie distorted, blackened forms of postured horror, smitten into stone, time,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: caught in meshes of it eternity, drawn back from dust
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: and ruin of the years, and given to all the
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: future of the world. The land is claimed of death.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: The daylight comes half strangled in the changing webs of cloud,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: that unseen. Spiders of bewildered winds weave and unweave across
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: the lurid sun in upper air below, no zephyr comes
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: to break with life the circling spell of death. Long
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: vapor serpents twist about the moon, and in the windy
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: murkness of the sky, the guttering stars are wild as
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: candle flames that near the socket. Thus the land shall be,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: and death shall wake, throned in Medusa's eyes, till in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: the irremedial webs of night, the sun is snared, and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: the corroded moon a dust upon the gulfs, and all
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the stars rotted and fallen like rivets from the sky,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: letting the darkness down upon all things. End of poem.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: This recording is in the public domain.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: Owed to the Abyese by Clark Ashton Smith read for
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: LibriVox dot Org by a suff course oh many gulfed, unalterable,
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: one whose deep sustains far drifting more than sun. The
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: vast eir ever star put out on thee and thou
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: shalt be whenever world remains, when all the Sun's triumphant
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: strength and pride is sunk in voidnous absolute, and their
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: majestic music wide in vaster silence, rendered mute. And though
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: God's will were night dusk the blue and law to
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: cancel and disperse the tangled tissues of the universe and
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: mould the suns anew, his might were impotent to conquer
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: thee O invisible infinity, Thy dark subdue all light that
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: treads the down space, exulting o'er thy deeps, the cycles
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: die and low thy darkness reaps the flame of mightiest
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: stars in in implicating wars, thou terrest planets from their
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: place World's granite spind to thine erodent seield, their treasures
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: centrally confined, increepts by continental pillars, seal'd What suns and
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: worlds have been thy prey through unhorizoned stretches of the past.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: What spheres that now a say Time's undimension'd vast shall
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: plunge forgotten to thy gloom at length with life that
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: cried its query of the night to ears with silence fill'd.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: What world's unborn shall bear thy strength, a girt by
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: a sun's unwearied might, and deep to darkness when the
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: sun is steel'd o incontestable abyss. What light in thine
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: embrace of darkness sleeps? What blaze of a sadrial multitude
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: no peopl'd world is left to miss? What motion is
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: at rest within thy deeps? What giles of planets long
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: become thy food, world's unconstant trainable that plunged their in
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: to peace like tempest, walled and crew forsaken ships and
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: sons that fell to huge and ultimate eclipse and lasting
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: gyre release? What sound thy gulfs of silence, sold stupendants,
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: thunder of the meeting stars, and crash of orbits that
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: diverged with life's thin song are merged thy quietudes in
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: fold appean and threnity is one and battled blare of
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: unremembered wars, with festal songs sung in the realms of
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: ruin spheres, and music that belongs to younger and undiscoverable years.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: With words of yesterday? Ah, who may stay thy soundless world?
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: Devouring tide? O thou whose hands pluck out the light
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: of stars are world's grown, but as fruit for thee
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: may no sufficient bars nor marks inveterate abide to baffle
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: thy persistency, a still and unstriving Now, what plottest thou
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: within thy universal ulterior deeps? Dark as the final lull
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: of suns? What new advancement of the night on citadels
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: of stars? Around whose might thy slow encroachment runs and
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: crouch in silence thunder potent sleeps? And of poem? This
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: recording is in the public domain.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: The Butterfly by Clark Ashton Smith Great for Librovokus dot
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Org by Rosslyn carlyle O. Wonderful and winged flower that
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: hoverest in the garden Clo finding in mazes of the rose,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the beauty of a summer hour O symbol of impermanence.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Thou art a word of beauty's tongue, a word that
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: in her song is sung, appealing to the inner sense
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: of that great mystic harmony. All lovely things are notes
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and words. The trees, the flowers, the songful birds, the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: flame white stars, the surging sea, the aureate light of
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: sudden dawn, the sunset's crimson afterglow, the summer clouds, the
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: dazzling snow, the brooks, the moonlight, chaste and wan lacking.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Who knows a cloud, a tree, a streamlet's pearl, the
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: ocean's roar from Nature's multi tuna's store imperfect were the melody,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Oh Beauty, why so sad my heart? Why stirs in me?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: A nameless pain which seems like some remembered strain, as
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: on this product of thine art enraptured marveling, I gaze
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and note how airily tis wrought, a winged dream, a
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: bodied thought, the spirit of the summer days, thy beauty, opes,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: O butterfly, the doors of being, with subtle scents of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Beauty's frail impermanence, and grief of knowing it must die again.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I seem to know the tears of others lives, the
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: woe and pain of days that died resurgent, weaned, the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: moons of countless bygone years on other worlds, on other
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: stars to us, but tiny points of light, or lost
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: in distances of night, beyond our system's farthest bars. A
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: priest to Beauty's service, sworn, I sought and served her
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: all my days with music and with hymns of praise.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: In sunset and the fires of morn. With thrilling heart,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: her foremine knew, and in the stars she whitely gleamed,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and all the face of nature seem'd expression of her
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: shape and hue. I grieved to watch the summer's pass,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: with all their gorgeous shows of bloom and sterner autumn
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: months assume their realm with withered leaves and grass mine
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: was the grief of change and death, of fair things
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: gone beyond. Recall the paling life of dawns, and all
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the flowers vanished hues and breath from out the web
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: of former lives, the ancient catenated chain of joy and sorrow, loss,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and gain one certain truth my heart derives. Though Beauty passes.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: This I know from change and death, this verity, her
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: spirit lives eternally, tis but her forms that come and go. Lo,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I am Beauty's constant Thrall must ever on her voice,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: await and follow through the maze of fate, her luring,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: strange and mystical. Obedient to her summonings, forever must my
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: soul aspire and seek, on wings of lyric fire, to
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: penetrate the heart of things wherein she sits augustly throned
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: in loveliness that renders dumb the essence and the final
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: sum with peril and with wonders owned. What though I
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: fail my duller sense, baffled as by a wall of stone,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: The high desire, the search alone are their own prize
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and recompense. End of poem. This recording is in the
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: public domain. The Price the Maze of Sleep and the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Mystic Meaning by Clark Ashton Smith read for Librovoke dot
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Org by Rosslyn Carlyle. The price behind each thing, as
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: shadow lies, beauty hath air, its cost within the moonlight
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: blooded skies, how many stars are lost? The maze of sleep.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, dark to the gaze of
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: moons and suns, through which the colored clue of dreams,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: a gossamer thread obscurely runs The mystic meaning alas that
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: we are deaf and blind to meanings all about us head?
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: What secrets lurk the woods amid? What prophecies are on
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the wind? What tidings do the billows bring? And cry
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: in vain upon the strand? If we might only understand
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: the Brooklet's cryptic murmuring, the tongues of earth and air
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: are strange, and yet who knows one little word learned
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: from the language of the bird might make us lords
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of fate and change end of poems. This recording is
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: in the public domain.
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: Owe to music by Clark Ashton Smith, read for LibriVox
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: dot Org by jars Amar. A woven fabric and bright
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: web of sound, whose threads are magical, and with swift
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: weaving thrall and hold the spirit bound. We may not
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: know whence thy strange sorceries fall, whether they be Earth's voices,
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: wild and strong, her high and perfect song, or broken
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: dreams of higher worlds unfound. For Lo, thou art as dreams,
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: and to thy realm, all hidden things belong, all fugitive
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: and evanescent gleams, the soul hath vainly sought, all mystic imminence,
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: all visions of ungrasped magnificence and great ideals pinnacled in thought,
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: all paths with marble fraught that lead to lands obscure.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: For Lo, upon thy road.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: Of sound we pass, seeking thy magic lure to vales
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: mist implicated and unsure, where all seems strange as visions
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: in a glass, and wonder haunted hills, where beauty is
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: an echo and a dream in sighing pines and rills,
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: clouded and deep with image, tree and sky, and where
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: bright rivers gleam past cities towering high, each wonderful as
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: some cloud fantasy. Thou loosenest the bondage of the years,
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: making the spirit free of all sub lunars and fears.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: Whom mount sun. Thine imperious wings shall see the ways
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: of life, as threads of day and night, serene above
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: their change. His eyes shall know but far transcendent things.
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: His ears shall hark, but voices free and strange. Vast
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: seas of outer light shall beat upon his sight. Eternal
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: winds shall touch him with their wings. His heart shall
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: thrill to larger, purer joy and grief, more deep than
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: earth may know, and eaten as dews of morning fill
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: the open flower into his soul shall flow high melodies
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: like tears that angels weep. Then shall he penetrate the
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: veils and our barriers of sound, and near the soul
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: of melody, Where wrapt in all splendor's ultimate, his soul
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: shall see the marvel and the glory that surround eternal
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: beauties shrine and catch afar the glint divine of her
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: moon colored robe, or haply hear with world oblivious, ear
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: some echo of her voice's mystery. Thou hast love's power
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: to find the soul's most secret chords that else were still,
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: and stirst them till they thrill, disclose to least faint
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: movements of thy wind. Thine oral sorcery o'whelms thy heart
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: as sunset storms the side. For thou art beauty bodied
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: forth in sound, her colors, bright and diverse forms expressed
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: in harmony within thy bound the flare of morning is
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: become a song, and tree and flower, a music sweet
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: and long. And in thy speech the power and majesty
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: that swing planet and sun and each dim atom of
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: the system manifest become articulate, expressed like ocean in the
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: brooklet's whispering beyond the wolf of finite things, Thy threads
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: of wonder, deep and tangled lie times intertexturings within eternity
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: with song may hap to be his memories for beauty
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: boarders nigh the ultimate eternal verities. End of poem. This
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: recording is in the public domain. The Last Night by
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: Clark Ashton Smith read for LibriVox dot Org by Jerus Amar,
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: I dreamed a dream. I stood upon a height, a
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: mountain's utmost eminence of snow, whence I beheld the plain
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: outstretched below to a far sea horizon, dim and white,
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: beneath the sun's expiring, ghastly light. The dead world lay
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: fantasmally aglow, its last fear weighted voice. A wind came low,
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: the dis and sea lay hushed as with affright. I
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: watched and lo the pale and flickering sun, in agony
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: and fierce despair flamed high and shadow slain went out
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: upon the gloom the night that grim, gigantic struggle. I
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: impended for a breath on wings of doom, and through
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: the air fell like a falling sky. End of poem.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: This recording is in the public domain. Ode on Imagination
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: by Clark Ashton Smith read from thebrevox dot Org by
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: Jarus Amar. Imagination's eyes outreach and distance bar the vision
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: of the greatest star that measures instantaneously and niled therein
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: as in a sea, its cincture of the system, laid
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: in skies abysses closed about with night, a tribute yield
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: to her retardless sight, and Mather's gates disclose the cannon
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: oars rock held in furnaces of planet cores, she penetrates
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: the Sun's transplendent shield, and through the obstruction of his vestment,
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: dyre pierces the centermost sublimity of his terrific heart, whose
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: gurge of fire heaves upward like a monstrous sea, and
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: inly riven by titanic throes, fills all his frame with
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: outward cataract of separate and immingling torrent streams her eyes
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: exact from the moon sphinx that wanes and grows in
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: wastes celestial alien dreams, brought down on wings of fleetless beams.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: Adown the clefts of under space, she rides her steed
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: a falling star, to seek where void and vagueness are
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: some mark or certainty of place upon their heavenly precipice.
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: The gathered suns shrink back aghast from that interminate abyss
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: and threat of sightless annex fast she stands endued with
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: super mundane crown and vestitures of emperies that include all
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: underworld and overworld of dream kingdoms, oercast and eminent heights
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: extreme where moon transcending light endures. She wanders in fantastic
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: lands where grow and scarce discerned fields and closes, blind
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: vag blossoms stirred by wings of adlons or roves in
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: forests where all sound is low. Each voice that shuns
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: the noiseful day and enters there to find twilight that
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: not exalts nor grieves, is quickly tuned to the sustrous thieves.
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: Upon some supersensual eminence. She hears the fragments of a
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: thunder aloud, where lightnings of ulterior truth intense flame through
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: the walls of hollow cloud. But these she may not
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: wholly grasp. With incomplete terrestrial clasp. Her eyes inevitably see
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: neath rounds and changes of exterior things, the movements of
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: a sentiality of ageless principles that alter not to temporal outrings,
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: unswerved by shattered worlds upbuilt once more, and stars no
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: longer hot or broken, constellations strewn like coals about the
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: heavenly floor, and rush of night upon the noon of
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: their lost worlds unsphered restorelessly in icy deserts of the sky.
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: From the beginning of the spheres, when systems nebulous outthrown
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: drove back the brinks of nullity with limitary marks. Till
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: end of suns and sunless death of years to her
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: are known the unevident, inseparable lengths that bind all deeps,
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: all suns, all days and darks. End of poem. This
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: recording is in the public domain.
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: The Wind and the Moon by Clark Ashton Smith read
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: for LibriVox dot Org by Jennifer Dolmen. Oh, list to
• 45:25
  Speaker 6: the wind of the night, Oh, hark, how it shrieks
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: as it goes on its hurrying quest forever. Its voice
• 45:32
  Speaker 6: is the voice of the dark. Forever, its voice is
• 45:35
  Speaker 6: the voice of unrest. Oh List to the pines as
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: they shiver and sway neath the ceaseless beat of its
• 45:42
  Speaker 6: myriad wings. How they moan and they sob, like living
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: things that cry in the darkness for light and day.
• 45:50
  Speaker 6: Now bend they low, as the wind mounts higher, and
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: its eerie voice comes piercingly, like the plaints of humanity's
• 45:58
  Speaker 6: misery and its burden of vain desire. Now to a sad,
• 46:02
  Speaker 6: tense whisper it fails. Then wildly and madly it raves
• 46:07
  Speaker 6: and it wails. Oh, the night is filled with its
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: sob and its shriek. It's weird and its restless yearning
• 46:15
  Speaker 6: cry as it races adown the darkened sky, with scurrying
• 46:19
  Speaker 6: of broken clouds that seek borne on the wings of
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: the hastening wind, a place of rest that they never
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: can find. And around the face of the moon they
• 46:30
  Speaker 6: cling its fugitive face to veil they aspire. But ever
• 46:35
  Speaker 6: and ever it peereth out, rending the cloud ranks that
• 46:39
  Speaker 6: hemmet about, and it seemeth a loss and phantom thing,
• 46:43
  Speaker 6: like a phantom of dead desire. End of poem. This
• 46:48
  Speaker 6: recording is in the public domain.
• 46:56
  Speaker 7: Lament of the Stars by Cloud Dark Ashton Smith, red
• 47:03
  Speaker 7: for LibriVox dot org by Shaki. A searl one tone
• 47:11
  Speaker 7: is mute within the starry singing, the unison fulfill'd complete
• 47:19
  Speaker 7: before one chord within the music sounds no more. And
• 47:26
  Speaker 7: from the stir of flames, forever winging, the pinions of
• 47:32
  Speaker 7: our sister, motionless in pits of indefinable duress, are fallen
• 47:41
  Speaker 7: beyond all recovery by exultation of the flying dance or rhythms,
• 47:50
  Speaker 7: holding as with sleep or trance, the maze of stars
• 47:56
  Speaker 7: that only death may free flung through the void's expanse
• 48:05
  Speaker 7: in gulphs depress'd, nor in the gulfs exulted, shall shade
• 48:12
  Speaker 7: nor lightning of her flame be found in space that
• 48:18
  Speaker 7: litton orbits gird around, Nor in the bottomless abyss, unvaulted
• 48:25
  Speaker 7: of unenviron'd all outlying night, allotted gyre, nor lawless comet
• 48:34
  Speaker 7: flight shall find and with its venturous ray, return from
• 48:40
  Speaker 7: gloom of undiscoverable scope, one ray of her to gladden
• 48:48
  Speaker 7: inter hope the doubtful eyes, denied that truth would yearn
• 48:54
  Speaker 7: the faltering feet that grope beyond rest jointless boundary nights,
• 49:02
  Speaker 7: surpassing all luminous horizons limited, the substance and the light
• 49:10
  Speaker 7: of Her have fed ruin and silence of the night's
• 49:15
  Speaker 7: amassing abandoned worlds forever morningless suns without worlds in frory, beamlessness,
• 49:27
  Speaker 7: girt for the longer gyre funereal, in violate, silence, earless,
• 49:35
  Speaker 7: unwakening that once was sound and level, calm, unbreaking, where
• 49:43
  Speaker 7: motions many ways, in oneness, fall of sleep, beyond forsaking,
• 49:52
  Speaker 7: circled with limitation unexceeded. Our eyes behold exterior mist and
• 50:01
  Speaker 7: gods unascertainable, as these shadows and shapes irresolutely heeded phantoms
• 50:12
  Speaker 7: that tower and substance scarcely known. Our sister knows all mysteries,
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: one alone, one shape, one shadow, crowding out the skies,
• 50:27
  Speaker 7: whose eyeless head and lipless face debar all others nameless
• 50:35
  Speaker 7: or familiar, filling with night, all former lips and eyes
• 50:41
  Speaker 7: of God and ghost and star. For her, all shapes
• 50:49
  Speaker 7: have fed the shape of night. All darker forms and
• 50:54
  Speaker 7: dubious forms or pallid are met and reconcile. Where none
• 51:01
  Speaker 7: is valid, But unto us solution nor respite of mysteries,
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: multiform incessancy from unexplored or system trodden sky shall come,
• 51:18
  Speaker 7: but as a load importunate Enigma, past and mystery foreseen
• 51:26
  Speaker 7: weigh mightily upon us, and between our sorrow deepens and
• 51:33
  Speaker 7: our songs abate in cadences of threeen a gloom that
• 51:41
  Speaker 7: gathers silence looms more closely and quiet, centering darkness at
• 51:48
  Speaker 7: its heart. But from the certitude of night depart uncertain
• 51:56
  Speaker 7: God nor idle on, less ghostly, but stronger, grown with
• 52:02
  Speaker 7: strength obtain'd from light that fail'd and par lent by
• 52:08
  Speaker 7: the stronger night, perplex us with new mystery and doubt.
• 52:15
  Speaker 7: If these are flames that death would toss and fall
• 52:21
  Speaker 7: be festal lights or lights funereal for mightier gods within
• 52:28
  Speaker 7: the gulfs without phantoms, more cryptical new shadows from the
• 52:37
  Speaker 7: wings of time, unfolding across the depth and eminence of years,
• 52:45
  Speaker 7: fall deeplier with the broadening gloom of fears, prophetic eyed
• 52:53
  Speaker 7: with planet hosts beholding the night take form upon the
• 52:58
  Speaker 7: face of suns we see. Thus grief's faticination runs presageful
• 53:07
  Speaker 7: sorrow for our sister slain, a night wherein all sorrows
• 53:14
  Speaker 7: shall be pasted one with night, single mystery at last,
• 53:21
  Speaker 7: nor vocal sun, nor singing world remain as times eleeggiust
• 53:32
  Speaker 7: end of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 53:42
  Speaker 7: The Winds by Clark Ashton Smith read Forlibrivox dot Org
• 53:50
  Speaker 7: by Shaki as earl to me, the winds that die
• 53:57
  Speaker 7: and start and strive in wars that never cease are
• 54:03
  Speaker 7: dearer than the level peace that lies unstirr'd at Summer's heart.
• 54:10
  Speaker 7: More dear to me the shadow'd wold, where with report
• 54:16
  Speaker 7: of tempest rife, the air intensifies with life than quiet
• 54:23
  Speaker 7: fields of summer's gold. I am the wind's admitted friend.
• 54:30
  Speaker 7: They seal are link'd fellowships with speech of warm or
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: icy lips, with touch of west and east that blend.
• 54:42
  Speaker 7: And when my spirit listless stands with folded wings that
• 54:49
  Speaker 7: do not live their own, assuageless wings, they give to
• 54:55
  Speaker 7: lift her from the sterless lands. Within the place unmanifest,
• 55:03
  Speaker 7: where central truth is imminent, lies there a vast entire
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: content of sound and movement. One in rest, I know
• 55:16
  Speaker 7: not this, yet in my heart I feel that where
• 55:22
  Speaker 7: all truths concur, that shrine is peaceless, with the stir
• 55:29
  Speaker 7: of winds that enter and depart end of poem. This
• 55:37
  Speaker 7: recording is in the public domain.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: As Sunset, the snow Blossoms and the Summer Moon by
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: Clark Ashton Smith read for librovoks dot Org by Roslyn Carlyle.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: A sunset as blood from some enormous hurt. The sanguine
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: sunset leapt across it like a dabbled skirt. The hurrying
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: tempest swept the snow blossoms, but yester eve, the winter
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: trees reared leafless, blackly bare, their twigs and branches poignant
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: marked upon the sunset lyre white, petaled opens Now the
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: dawn and in its pallid glow revealed each leaflorn barren
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: tree stands white with flowers of snow. The summer moon.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: How is it o moon that melting unstintedly prodigally on
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: the peak's hard majesty, while they seem diaphanous and flucuent
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: as a veil, and pouring thy rapturous light through pine
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: and oak and laurel, till the summer sharpened, green, softening
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: and tremulous is a lustrous miracle. How is it that
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: I find, when I turn again to thee, that thy
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: lost and wasted light is regained in one magic breath?
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: End of poems. This recording is in the public domain.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: The Cloud Island by Clark Ashton Smith read for librovox
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: dot org by Rosslyn Carlyle. What islands? Marvelous? Are these?
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: That gem the sunset's tides of light opals a glue
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: in saffron seas? How beautiful they lie and bright like
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: some new found hesperity. What varied changing magic hues tint
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: gorgeously each shore and hell? What blazing vivid golds and
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: blues their seaward winding valleys fell, What amethysts their peaks suffuse,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: close held by curving arms of land that out within
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: the ocean reach. I mark a faiy city stand set
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: high upon a slooping beach that burns with fire of
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: shimmering sand of sunset light is formed each wall, each
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: dome or rainbow bubble seems, and every spire that towers
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: tall a ray of golden moonlight gleams of opal flame
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: is every hall alas how quickly dims their glue? What
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: veils their dreamy splendors? Mare like broken dreams? The islands
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: go as down from strands of clown and star, the
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: sinking tides of daylight flow. End of poem. This recording
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The Return of Hyperion by
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Clark Ashton Smith read for librivolks dot Org by Rosslyn Carlisle.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: The dungeon clefts of Tartarus are just beyond Yon Mountain girdle,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: whose mass is bound around the bulk of the dark, unstared,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: unmoving east alike on the mountains and the plain, the
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: night is as some terrific dream that closes the soul
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: in a crypt of dread, apart from touch or sense
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: of earth, as in the space of eternity, What light
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: unseen perturbs the darkness. Behold, it stirs and fluctuates between
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the mountains and the stars that are set as guards
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: above the prison of the captive Titan God. I know
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: that in the deeps beneath Hyperion divides the pillared vault
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: of dark and stands a space upon its ruin. Then
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: light is laid upon the peaks as the hand of
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: one who climbs beyond and lo the sun. The sentinel
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: stars are dead with overpotent flame, and in their place
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Hyperian stands. The night is loosened from the land as
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: a dream from the mind of the dreamer. A great
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: wind blows across the dawn, like the wind of the
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: motion of the world. End of poem. This recording is
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Leith by Clark Ashton Smith read
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: for LibriVox dot Org by Rustling Carlyle. I flow beneath
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: the columns that upbear the world and all attracts of
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: heaven and hell foamless. I sweep where sounds nor glimmers
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: tell my motion, nad ear word, no moments. Flair gives
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: each to each the shapes that unaware commingle at my
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: verge to test the spell of waves and tents with night,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: whose deeps compel one face from pain and rapture and despair.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: The fruitless Earth's denied and cheated sons meet here where
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: fruitful and unfruitful cease. And when their lords, the mightier
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: hidden ones, have drained all worlds till being's wine is low,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: shall they not come, and from the oblivious flow drink
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: at one draft universe of peace. End of poem. This
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Atlantis by Clark Ashton
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Smith read for LibriVox dot Org by Rosslyn Carlisle. Above
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: its domes, the gulfs accumulate to where the sea winds
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: trumpet forth their screed. But here the buried waters take
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: no heed death, and with closed lips from pressive weight
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: imposed by ocean, dim inanimate on temples of an unremembered
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: creed involved in long, slow tentacles of wheat, the dead
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: tide lies, immovable as fate. From out the ponderous vaulted
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: ocean down a clouded light is questionably shed on altars
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: of a goddess, garlanded with blossoms of some weird and
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: hueless vine, and winged fleet through skies beneath the foam
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: like silent birds, the sea things dart and shine. End
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Unrevealed by Clark Ashton Smith, read for librovox dot Org
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: by Rouslyn Carlyle. How dense the glooms of death, impervious
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: to aught of old memorial light? How straight the sunless road,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: suspended separate that leads to later birth on tremulous with
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: any secret morn of stars to us the past is closed,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: as with division, grate of planet, girling seas unknown, its
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: gait beyond the mouths of shadows caverna. Oh, may it
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: be that death in kindness trips the soul of memories rimant, rendering, blinder,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: vision less, surmounted, deeps appall, as when on mountain peaks
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: a glance behind betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall. End of poem.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: The Eldwich stock by Clark Ashton Smith, red for librivuks
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 7: dot Org by Shakir A. Sarl Now As the Twilight's
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 7: doubtful interval closes with knights accomplished certainty, a wizard wind
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 7: goes crying eerily, and in the glade unsteady shadows crawl
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fall, as
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 7: with some dreadful witch's ecstasy flung upward to the dark.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 7: Whence glitters free, the crooked moon, impendent over all. Twin
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 7: veils of covering cloud and silence thrown across the movement,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 7: and the sound of things make blank the night till
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 7: in the broken west the moon's ensanguined blade a while
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 7: is shown, the night grows whole again, the shadows rest
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 7: gathered beneath a greater shadows wings end of pom. This
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 7: recording is in the public domain.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: The Cherry Snows and Fairy Lanterns by Clark Ashton Smith,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 6: read for LibriVox dot org by Jennifer Dolman. The Cherry Snows.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: The cherry snows are falling now down from the blossom
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: clouded sky of severed, troubled twig and bowl in widely
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: settling worlds. They fly. The orchard earth, unclothed and brown,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: is wintery, yewed, with petals bright even the snow. They
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: glimmer down brief as the snows their stainless white fairy lanterns.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 6: Tis said that these blossom lanterns light the elves upon
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: their midnight way, that very talls in elfin play received
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: their beams of magic white. I marvel not that it
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: be true. I know this flower has lighted me near
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: to Beauty's mystery and past the vales of secrets. New
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: end of Poems. This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Nirvana by Clark Ashton Smith read for Librevoks dot Org
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: by Rosslyn Carlyle, Poised as a god whose lone detached
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: post an eerie pins between the boundary marks of finite
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: years and those unvaried darks that veil eternity. I saw
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the host of worlds and suns swept from the furthermost
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: of night, confusion as of dust with sparks, where all
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: towards the opposing brink, as one who harks some warning
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: trumpet time A withered ghost fled with them, disunited orbs
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: that light were atoms of the universal frame. They passed
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: to some eternal fragment heap, and lo the gods from
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: space discorporate who where its life and vital spirit came
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: drawn outward by the vampire lips of sleep. End of poem.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain. The Nemesis of
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Suns by Clark Ashton Smith read for Librovoks dot Org
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: by Rosslyn Carlile.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: Lo.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: What are these the gyres of sun and world fulfilled
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: with daylight by each toiling sun? Lo? What are these
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: but webs of radiant spun beneath the roof of night,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: and torn or furled by night at well? All opposite
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: powers upworld are less than chaff to this imperious one,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: as wind tossed chaff until its sport be done, scattered
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: and lifted up and downward hurled. All guyers are held
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: within the path and spanned of Knight's Aeonian compass, loosely
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: pent as with the embrace of lethal tightening weight. All
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: suns are grasped within the hollow hand of Knight. The
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: god had soul omnipotent, whose other names are Nemesis and Fate.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 8: White's Death by clap Eshton Smith read for LibriVox dot
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 8: Org by Debasum methought. The world was bound with final frost,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 8: the sun made hueless as to fear end all ill
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 8: you meaned. Yet the lands it could not fall. Then
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 8: on my road with instant evening crossed Death stood, and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 8: in its white, shadowy films unround mine eyes to got
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 8: the light until I came where poured the in separate,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 8: unshadowed flame of phantom suns in self eradiant drown, Death
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 8: lay revealed in all its haggardness, immitigable wastes, horizonless profundities
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 8: that held nauba nor view all hues, wherewith the suns
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 8: and worlds were dyed in light invariable, nullified, all darkness,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 8: rendered shutterless and pale. End of poem. This recording is
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 8: in the public domain.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 9: Retrospect and forecast by Clark Ashton Smith, read for librivoxt
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 9: dot Org by Debra sum Turn round o life and
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 9: know with eyes aghast the breast that fed thee Death,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 9: disguiseless stern even now within thy mouth from tomb, and
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 9: earn the dust is sweet all nurture that thou hast
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 9: was once as thou and fed with lips made fast
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 9: on death, whose seatless mouth it fed. In turn, kingdoms
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 9: debased enthrones that thou wart yearn all are but golds
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 9: that baten on the past, monstrous and dread. Must it
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 9: forever abide this unescapable alternity. Must loveliness find rood within
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 9: thecas hay and night devour its flaming hues away sickening?
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 9: Will life not turn eventually or revenu is death at
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 9: last be satisfied? And of poem. This recording is in
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 9: the public domain.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 8: Shadow of Nightmare by Clark Eshtonsmith read from the Privoxtard
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 8: Arch by Debra sam What heirness is that unresisted groups
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 8: my spirit as with chains, and from the sound and
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 8: light of dreams compels me to the bound where darkness
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 8: wades with white expectant lips albey thereat my footing holds
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 8: nor slips the threads of their only potence confound all
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 8: days and hours of blackness, gird around with sense of
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 8: near unswervable eclipse. So lies a land whose noon is
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 8: played with of vets, then their old shadows, Suavia whose
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 8: flight is traced on groops of white boats, wearing from
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 8: cut to cut, from room to room, in hieroglyphics of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 8: horran doom, the slowly trailed, the slime of crawling toads.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: The Song of a Comet by Clark Ashton Smith read
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: for librevoks dot Org by Roslyn Carlyle. A plummet of
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: the changing universe far cast, I flare through gulfs the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Sun's uncharted orbits bind and spaces bare that intermediate dark
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: summerse by road of sun or world confined upon my
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: star undominated gyre, I mark the system's vanish one by
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: one among the swarming worlds. I lunge and sudden plunge
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: close to the zones of solar fire or mid the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: mighty rack of stars undone flash and with momentary rays
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: compel the dark to yield their aimless forms, whose once
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: far putent blaze in Ash's chill is now inurned. As
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: space revealed, I see their planets turned, where holders of
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: the heritage of breath exultant rose and sank to barren
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: death beneath the stars, unheeding eyes, a down contiguous skies,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: I pass the thickening broom of systems yet unshaped that
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: hang im thence along mysterious shores of gloom or sea,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: unimplicated in their dow, the final and disastrous gyre of
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: blinded suns that meet and from their mingled heat and
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: battle clouds in tents o'erspread the deep with fire through
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: stellar'd labyrinths, I thrid mine orbit placed amed the multiple
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: and iris stars, or head unsolv'd and intricate in many
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: a planet swinging Sun's estate. Oftentimes I steal in solitary
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: flight along the rim of the exterior night that grips
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: the universe, and then return past out our footholds of
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: sidereal light, to where the systems gather and disperse, and
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: dip again into the web of things to watch it
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: shift and burn. Hearted with stars on peaceless wings, I
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: pierce where deep outstripping all surmise the nether heavens drop
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: unsunned by stars and planets shunned. And then I rise
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: through vaulting gloom to watch the dark snatch at the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: flame of failing suns, or mark the heavy dust and
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: silent skies strewn thick with wrecked and broken stars, where
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: many a fighted orbit runs an arrow sped from some
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: eternal bow, through change of firmaments and systems, sent and
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: finding bourn nor bars, I flee nor now for what
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: eternal mark my flight is meant? End of poem, This
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The retribution by Clark
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: Ashton Smith read for Librivoks dot org by Rosslyn Carlisle
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Old Egypt gods a Cyrus, Ammon, Thoth came on my
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: dream in thunder, and their feet revealed, where as the
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: leavin's fire and heat, the hosts of Rome, the Arab,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: and the Goth have left their altars dark, yet stern
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: and wroth in olden power they stood, whose wings were
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: fleet and mighty, as with strength of storms that meet
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: in mingled foam of clouds and ocean froth above my dream,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: with arch of dreaded wings, in judgment and in sentence
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: of what crime I knew, not sate the gods outcast
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: of time they passed, and lo a plague of darkness fell,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: unsleeping and accursed, with nameless things and dreams that stood
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: the ministers of Hell. End of poem. This recording is
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: in the public domain.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 10: To the Darkness by Clark Ashton Smith read for LibriVox
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 10: dot Org by Jordan Heron. Thou hast taken the light
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 10: of many suns, and they are sealed in the prison
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 10: house of gloom, even as candle flames. Hast thou taken
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 10: the souls of men with winds from out a hollow place.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 10: They are hid in the abyss as in a sea,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 10: and the gulfs are over them, as the weight of
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 10: many peaks, as the depth of many seas. Thy shields
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 10: are between them and the light. They are past its
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 10: burden and bitterness. The spears of the day shall not
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 10: touch them. The chains of the sun shall not hail them.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: Forth.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 10: Many men there were in the days that are now
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 10: of thy realm, that thou hast sealed with the seal
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 10: of many deeps. Their feet were as eagle's wings in
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 10: the quest of truth. Aye mightily they desired her face,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 10: hunting her through the lands of life, as men in
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 10: the blankness of the waste, that seek for a buried
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 10: treasure house of kings. But against them were the vales
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 10: that hands may not rend nor sabers pierce. And truth
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 10: was withheld from them, as a water that is seen
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 10: afar at dawn and at noon is lost in the sand.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 10: Before the feet of the traveler, the world was a barrenness,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 10: and the gardens were as the waste, And they turned
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 10: them to the adventure of the dark, to the traveling
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 10: of the land without roads, to the sailing of the
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 10: sea that hath no beacons. Why have they not returned
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 10: their quest? Hath found end in thee? Or surely they
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 10: had fared once more to the place. Whence they came
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 10: as men that have traveled to a fruitless life land.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 10: They have looked on thy face, and to them it
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 10: is the countenance of truth. Thy silence is sweeter to
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 10: them than the voice of love, Thine embrace more dear
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 10: than the clasp of the beloved. They are fed with
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 10: the emptiness past the veil, and their hunger is filled.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 10: They have found the waters of peace, and are athirst
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 10: no more. They know a rest that is deeper than
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 10: the gulfs, and whose seal is unbreakable, as the seal
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 10: of the void. They sleep the sleep of the suns,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 10: and the vast is a garment unto them. End of poem.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 10: This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: A Dream of Beauty by Clark Afton Smith read for
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Librivoks dot Org by Roslyn Carlyle. I dreamed that each
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: most lovely, the perfect thing that nature hath of sound
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: and form and hue, the winds, the grass, the light,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: concentering dew, the gleam, and swiftness of the sea, bird's wing,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: blueness of sea and sky, and gold of storm transmuted
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: by the sunset, and the flame of autumn colored leaves
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: before me came and meeting merged to one diviner form,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: incarnate beauty t was whose spirit thrills through glaucous ocean
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: and the greener hills, and in the cloud bewildered peaks
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: is pent like some descended star. She hovered. Or but
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: as I gazed in doubt and wonderment, mine eyes were dazzled,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: and I saw no more. End of poem. This recording
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The dream Bridge by Clark
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: Ashton Smith read for librovoks dot Org by Roslyn Carlyle,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: all drear and barren seemed the hours that passed, rain
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: swept and tempest blown. The dead leaves fell like brownish
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: notes within the rain's gray monotone. There came a lapse
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: between the showers. The clouds grew rich with sunset gleams.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: Then o'er the sky a rainbow sprang a bridge onto
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: the land of dreams. The fugitives o fugitive fragrances that
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: tremble heavenward unceasing, or if ye linger halt, but his
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: memories on the verge of forgetfulness. Why must ye pass
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: so fleetingly on wings that are less than wind to
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: a death unknowable? Soon ye are gone, and the air
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: forgets your faint unrest in the garden's breathlessness, where fall
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the snows of silence? In of poems. This recording is
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: in the public domain.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 6: A live oak leaf and pine Needles by Clark Ashton
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 6: Smith read for Libervox dot Org by Jennifer Dolman. A
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: live oak leaf. How marvelous this bit of green I
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: hold and soon shall throw away, its subtile veins, its
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: vivid sheen, seem fragment of God's array in all the
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: hidden toil of earth, which is the more laborious part
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 6: to rear the oak's enormous girth, or to shape its
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 6: leaves with poignant art. Pine needles, O, little lances dipped
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 6: in gray and satin orders, straight and clean, How delicately
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 6: clear and keen your points against the sapphire day, attesting
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 6: Nature's perfect art, Ye fringe of limpid firmament, O little
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 6: lances keenly sent to pierce with beauty to the heart
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 6: end of poems. This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: To the Sun by Clark Ashton Smith read for librovox
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: dot Org by Roslyn Carlyon. Thy light is an eminence
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: unto thee, and thou art upheld by the pillars of
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: thy strength. Thy power is a foundation for the worlds.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: They are belded thereon as upon a lofty rock, where
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: to no enemy have access. Thou puttest for thy rays,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: and they hold the sky as in the hollow of
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: an immense hand. Thou erectest thy light as four walls
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: and a roof, with many beams and pillars. Thy flame
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: is as stronghold, based as a mountain. Its bastions are
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: tall and firm like stone. The worlds are bound with
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: the ropes of thy well like steeds. Are they stayed
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: and contrained by the rains of invisible lightnings with bands
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: that are stouter than iron manifold, and stronger than the
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: cords of the gulfs. Thou withholdest them from the brink
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: of outward and perilous deeps, lest they perish in the
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: desolations of the night, or be stricken of strange suns.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Lest they be caught in the pitfalls of the abyss,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: or fall into the furnace of Arctus. Thy law is
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: as a shore unto them, and they are restrained thereby
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: as the sea. Thou art foot and drink to the
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: worlds yea by thy toil are they sustained that they
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: fail not upon the rood of space, whose goal is Hercules.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: When thy pillars of force are withdrawn, and the walls
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: of thy light fall inward, borne down by the sundering Knight,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: and thy head is covered with the shadow, the world
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: shall wonder as men bewildered in the sterile and lifeless waste,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: athirst and unfed shall they be. When the springs of
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: thy strength are dust, and thy fields of light are
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: black with dearth. They shall perish from the ways that
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: Thou ShoWest no longer, and emptiness shall close above them.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: Averted Malavis by Clark Ashton Smith read for Librevoks dot
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: Org by Russlyn Carlyle, where mandrakes crying from the moonless
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: fen told how a witch with gaze of owl or
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: bat found and each root malevolently fat pulled for her
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: waiting cauldron on my ken upstole, escaping to the world
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: of men a vapor as of some infernal vat against
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: the stars at clowm and caught their at, as if
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: their bright regard to veil again despite the web methought
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: they saw appalled, the stealthier weft, in which all sound
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: was still, then sprang, as if the night found breath
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: anew a wind, whereby the stars were dis and the
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: thralled far off. I heard the cry of frustrate ill
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: a witch that wailed above her curdled brew. End of poem.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain. The Medusa of
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: the Skies by Clark Ashton Smith read for librevooks dot
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Org by Rosslyn Carlyle Haggard. As if resurgent from a tomb,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: the moon uprears her ghastly shrunken head, crowned with such
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: light as flares upon the dead from pallid skies, more
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: deathlike than the gloom now fall her beams till sloop
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: and plane assume the whiteness of a land whence life
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: is fled and shadows that a sepulcher might shed move
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: livid as the stealthy hands of doom o'er rigid hills
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: and valleys locked and mute, a pallor steals as of
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: a world made stell, when death that erst had crept
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: stands absolute, an earth now frozen fast by power of
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: eyes that malifice and purposed silence fell the gaze of
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: that Medusa of the skies. End of poem. This recording
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. A Dead City by Clark
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: Ashton Smith read for Librovoks dot Org by Rosslyn Carlyle.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: The twilight reigns above the fallen noon, within an ancient
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: land whose after time lies like a shadow o'er its
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: ruined prime, like rising mist. The night increases soon round
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: shattered palaces ere Yet the moon on mute, uncenturied walls
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: and turrets climb and touch with whiteness of sepulchral rhyme,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: the desert where a city's bones are strewn. She comes
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: at last, unburied, thick they show in all the hoary
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: nakedness of stone. From out a shadow like the lips
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: of death, issues a wind that, through the stillness blown,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: cries like a prophet's ghost, with wailing breath, the weirds
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: of finished and forgotten woe. End of poem. This recording
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 7: The Song of the Stars by Clark Ashton Smith for
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 7: LibriVox dot Org by Shakir a s earl. From the
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 7: final reach of the upper night to the nether darks,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 7: where the comets die, from the outermost, born of the
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 7: rains of light, to the central gloom of the midmost sky.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 7: In our mazeful gyres, we fly, and our flight is
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 7: a coral chant of flame that ceaseless fares to the
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 7: outer void, with the under song of the peopl'd spheres,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 7: the voices of comet and asteroid, and the wail of
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 7: the spheres destroyed. Forever we sing to a god unseen
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 7: in the dark. Shall our voices fail? The void is
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 7: his robe inviolate, The night is his awful veil. How
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 7: our fires grow dim and pale. From the order'd gyres
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 7: goes ever afar our song of flame o'er the void unknown,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 7: where circles nor world, nor comet nor star. Shall it die,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 7: ere it reach his throne on the shoreless deeps of
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 7: the seas of gloom. Sailing we venture afar and wide,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 7: where'er await the tempests of doom, where the silent maelstroms
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 7: lurk and hide, and the darkling reefs abide, and the
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 7: change and ruin of stars. Is a song that rises
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 7: and ebbs in a tide of fire, a music whose
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 7: notes are of dreadful flame, whose harmonies ever leap higher
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 7: where the suns and the worlds expire. Is such music
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 7: not fit for a god? Yet ever the deep is
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 7: a dark, and ever the night is a void, nor
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 7: brightens a word, nor a mark to show if our
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 7: God may hark from the gyres of change, goes ever
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 7: afar our flaming chant o'er the deep unknown, the song
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 7: of the death of planet and star, Shall it die?
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 7: Ere it reach his throne in our shadows of light?
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 7: The planets sweep and endure for the span of our
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 7: prime glob'd atoms that hazard the termless deep, with races
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 7: that bow to the law of time, and yet cherish
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 7: a dream sublime. And they cry to the God behind
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 7: the veil. Yet how should their voices pass the night,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 7: the silence that waits in the rayless void, if he
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 7: hear not our music of light and the thunderous song
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 7: of our might. And they strive in the gloom for truth.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 7: Yet how should they pierce the veil when we, with
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 7: our splendors of flame in the darkness, faint and fail
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 7: our fires, how feeble and pale from the ordered gyas
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 7: goes ever afar our song of flame o'er the void unknown,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 7: where circles no world, nor comet nor star. Shall it
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 7: die ere it reach his throne? End of palm. This
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 7: recording is in the public domain.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: Copan by Clarkashton Smith read for Librovox dot Org by
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: Rosslyn Carlyle. Around its walls, the forests of the west
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: gloom as about some mysteries, final pale might lie its
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: multifold exterior veil, sculptured with signs and meanings, unconfessed, its
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: lordly fanes and palaces. A test a pass before whose
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: wall of darkness fail reason and fancy, finding not the
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: tale erased by time from histories, pallimpsest within this place
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: that from the gloom of eld still meets the light.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: A people came and went like whirls of dust between
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: its columns blown, an alien race whose record shadow held,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: is sealed with those of others long forespent, that died
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: in sunless planets, lost and lown. End of poem. This
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. A song of Dreams
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: by Clark Ashton Smith read for librovox dot Org by
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Ruslyn Carlyle. A voy came to me from the night
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: and said, what profit hast thou in thy dreaming of
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: the years that are set, and the years yet unrisen?
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: Hast thou found them tillable land? Is there fruit that
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: thou canst pluck therein? Or any harvest to be moon?
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: Shalt thou digg aught of gold from the minds of
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: the past, or trade for merchandise in the years where
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: all is rotten? Are they a sea that will bring
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: THEE to any shore? Or a desert that vergeth upon
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: aught but the waste? Shalt thou drink from the springs
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: that are emptied, or find sustenance in shadows? What value
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: hath the future given THEE? Is there aught in the
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: days yet dark that thou canst hold with thy hands?
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Are they a fortress that will afford THEE protection against
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: the swords of the world? Is there justice in them
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: to balance the world's in equity or benefit to outweigh
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: its laws? Then spake I in answers, saying of my
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: dreams I have made a road, and my soul goeth
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: out thereon to that unto which no eye hath opened,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: nor ear become keen to hearken to the glories that
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: are shut past all access of the keys of sense,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: whose walls are hidden by the air, and whose doors
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: are concealed with clarity. And the road is traveled of
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: secret things coming to me from far, of bodiless powers,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: and beauties without color or form, holden by any loveliness
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: seen of earth and of my dreams. Have I belded
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: an inn wherein these are as guests, and unto it
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: come the dead for a little rest and refuge from
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: the hollowness of the unharvestable wind and the burnen of
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: too great space. The fields of the past are not
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: void to me, who are with the scythe of thought,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: nor the orchards of future years unfruitful to the hands
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: of visionings. I've retrieved from the darkness the years and
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: the things that were lost, and they are held in
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: the light of my dreams, with the spirits of years unborn,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: and of things yet bodiless, as in an hospitable house.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: They shall live while the dreams abide. End of poem.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain. The Balance by
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: Clark Ashton Smith read for Librevoks dot Org by Rosslyn Carlyle.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: The world upheld their pillars for a while. Now where
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: imperial On and Memphis stood, the hot wind sifts across
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: the solitude, the sand that once was wall and peristyle,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: or Furrow's life the main each desert mile, where ocean
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: deep above its ancient food of cities fame forgot. The
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: waste is nude, traceless as bellows of each sunken pile.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: Lo for that wrong, shall vengeance come at last when
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: the devouring earth in ruin one, with royal walls and
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: palaces undone and sunk within the desolated past, shall drift
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: and winds that wrangle through the vast immingle it with
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: ashes of the sun. End of poem. This recording is
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Saturn by Clark Ashton Smith read
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: for Librevoks dot Org by Rosslyn Carlile. Now were the
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: Titans gathered round their king in a waste region, slipping
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: toward the verge of drear extremities that clasp the world,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: a land half molded by the hasty gods, and left
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: beneath the bright scorn of the stars. Grotesque misfeatured blackly
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: gnarled with stone, or worn and marred from conflict with
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: the deep conterminate of chaos. Here they stood old saturn midmost,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: like a central peak, among the lesser hells that guard
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: its base, defeat that gloomed within each countenance, like the
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: first tinge of death. Upon a sun gathering like some
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: dusk vapor found them called clumsy of limb and halting,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: as with weight of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments. A
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: wind cry round them like a trumpet voice of phantom hosts, hurried,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: importunit and intermittent, with a tightening fear. Far off, the
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: sunset leapt, and the hard clouds molten. Among the peaks
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: seemed furnaces in which to make the fetters of the world.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: Seared by the lightning of the younger gods. They saw
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: beyond the grim and crouching hills those leavens thrust like
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: spears into the heart of swollen clouds, or tearing through
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: the sky like severing swords. Then, as the Titans watched,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: the night rose like a black, enormous mist around them,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: wherein naught was visible save the sharp leaven leaping in
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: the north, and no sound came except of seas remote
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: that seemed like chaos, ravening past the verge of all
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: the world, fed with the crumbling coasts of matter, tell
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: the moon. Discovering that harsh, swart wilderness of sand and stone,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: tissued and twisted in chaotic veld, lit with illusory fire,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: each titan's form, they sat in silence, mute as stranded orbs,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: the rack of time, upcast on ruinous coasts, and in
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: the slow withdrawal of the tide, safe for a while.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: Small solace did they take from that frower radiance glistering
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: on the dull black desert, gripped in iron silences, like
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: a false triumph ore contestless fights, or a mirage of
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: life in wastes of death. Yet where they moved to speak,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: and Saturn's voice, seeming the soul of that tremendous land
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: set free in sound, startled the haughty stars, O Titans, gods,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: sustainers of the world. Is this the end? Must Earth
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: go down to chaos? Lacking our strength beneath the unpracticed
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: sway of Godling's vein precipitate with youth who think unrecking
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: of disastrous chance to bind their will as rains upon
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: the sun, or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: Must we behold with eyes of impotence that universal rack,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: even though it whelm. These are our supers, in impartial doom,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: beneath the shards and fragments of the world. Were it
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: not preferable to return and meeting them in fight, unswervable
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: drag down the earth ourselves and these our foes, one
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: sacrifice unto the gods of chaos? Why should we stay
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: and live the tragedy of power that survives its use?
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: Now speak Enceladus, When that the echoings of Saturn's voice
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: had fled remote and seemed dead, thunders caught and flung
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: from star to star, wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: night word gulf like to astone a curious child might
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: cast to taste the fall of some dark precipice, Patience,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: and caution. Should we take a smile, not rashness, for
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: a weapon, too, keen sword that cuts the strained knot
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: of destiny ne'er be tied again? Were it not best
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: to watch the slow procedure of the days, that we
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: may grasp a time more opportune when desperation is not
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: all our strength or the found newly filled with victory,
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: then may we hope to conquer back thy realm for thee,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: not for the gods of nothingness. He ceased, and after him,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: no lesser god gave voice upon the shaken silences, none
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: venturing to risk comparison inevitable then of eloquence with his
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: but silence, like the ambiguousness of signal, and of lesser
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: stars overcast and merged in one confusion by the moon
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: possessed that multitude, till saturn rose around his form. The
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: light intensified and strengthened, with addition, wild and strange, investing
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: him as with a phantom robe, and gathering like a
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: crown about his brow. His sword, whereon the shadows lay
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: like rust, he took, and, dipping it within the moon,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: made clean its length of blade, and from it cast
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice came
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: like a torrent, and from out his eyes streamed wilder
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: power that mingled with the sound, and his resurgent power
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: in glance and word, poured through the Titan's souls and
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: was become the fountains of their own, and at his flame,
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: their fires were lit once more, whose restlessness leapt and
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: aspired against the steadfast stars. And now they turned majestic
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: with resolve, where red upon the forefront of the north,
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: Arcturus was a beacon to the winds. And with the
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: flickering winds that lightly struck the desert dust then sprang
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: again in air, they passed athwart the foreland of the North.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: Against their march, they saw the shrunken waste, a riveled region,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: like a world grown old, whose sterile breast knew not
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: the lips of life in all its epoch, or a
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: world that was the nurse of infant death. Ere he
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: became too large, too strong for its restraining arms, and
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: towered athwart the suns. And there they crossed metallic slopes
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: that rang like monstrous shields, but gave not to their
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: tread and clanging plains, like body male of greater vaster gods.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon, they heard
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: the eld rich laughters of the wind, seeming the mirth
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: of death. And neath their gaze gaunt valleys deepened like
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: an old despair. Yet strewed, they onwn through the moon's fantasies,
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: bold with resolve across a land like doubt. And now
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: they passed among huge mountain bulks, themselves like peaks, detached
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: and moving slow mid fettered brethren, adding weight and gloom
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: to that mute conclave great against the stars emerging fence,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: the Titans marched where still their own portentous shadows went before,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: like night that fled but shrunk, not dusking all that
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: desert way. And thus they came where sleep, the sleep
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: of weary victory, had seized the younger gods, as captives,
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: born beyond all flight of mounting battle ecstasies, in that
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: high triumph of forgetfulness. And on that sleep the sh
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: triding Titans broke, vague and immense at first, like forming
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: dreams to those disturbed gods in mist of drowse, poor,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: blind and doubtful. Yet though soon they knew their erst
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: defeated foes and rising, stood in silent ranks, expectant that
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: appeared to move with shaking of astonished fires that bristled forth,
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: or were displayed like plumes, late folded close, now trembling
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: terribly pending between the desert and the stars. Then sudden
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: as the waking from a dream the battle leapt, where
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: striving shapes of gods moved brightly through the world and
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: stricken air, sweeping it to a froth of fire, and
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: all that ancient deep established desert rocked, shaken as by
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: an onset of the gulfs of gathered and impatient chaos.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: While above the place where central battle burned, the stars
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: drew back in fright or dazzlement, paling to more secluded distances,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: lo where the moon had wrought elusive dreams that clothed
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: the wild in doubt and fantasy, hiding its hideousness with
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: bright mirage, or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of hell.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: Mightier confusion, chaos absolute upon the imperiled sky and trembling
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: world now made a certainty within itself the one thing
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: sure in shaken sky or world. Male storms of battle,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: caught in storms of fire, torn and involved by weaponry
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: of gods, crescented blades that met with rounds of shields,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: grappling of shapes seen through the riven blaze, an instant
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: then once more obscure and known only by giant heavings
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: of that war of furious gods and roused elements, divided leagued,
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: contending evermore along the desert. These augmentative round, one thick
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: center stunned the faltering night, so huge that chaos complicate
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: within with movements of gigantic, legionary, antagonistic streams, impetuous hurled
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: where Jove and Saturn, thunder crested, led in fight unswervable,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: so wide the strife of differing impulse, that decision found
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: no foothold till that first confusion should in ordered conflict,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: rearrange and stand with its true horses. Now this seemed remote,
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: with that wide struggle pending terribly, as if all various
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: colored time had made a truce with white eternity, and
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: both stood watching from afar through drifts of haze, the
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: broadening moon made ominous with red, glared from the westering night.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: And now that war built for itself far up a
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: coupe of cloud, and drew it down, far off upon
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: all sides, impervious to the moon and sordid stars, And
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: by their own wild light, the gods fought on neath
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: that stupendous concave, like a sky filled and illumined with
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: glare of bursting suns, and cast by their own light,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: upon that sky, the God's own shadows moved like shape
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: and gloom phantasmagoric changed and amplified a shifting freeze that
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: flickered dreadfully in spectral battle. Indecisive, then swift, as it
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: had begun, the contest turned, and on the heaving Titan's
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: massive front, it seemed that all the motion and the strength,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: self thwarting and confounded of that strife was flung in
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: centered impact terrible, with rush of all that fire to pestuous,
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: blown as if before some wind of further space striking
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: the earth, lo all the Titan's flame bent back upon themselves,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: and they were hurled in vaster disarray. With vanguard piled
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: on rear and center. Saturn could not stem the loosened
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: torrents of long pent feet. He with his host, was
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: but as drift thereon, borne wildly down the whelmed and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: reeling world, hurling like slanted rain. The lurid Leaven fell
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: o'er that flight of Titans, and behind, in striding menace,
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: all victorious Jove loomed like some craggy cloud, with thunders
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: crowned and footed with the winds. In that defeat, with
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: Jove's pursuit involved in manifold. Few found escape unscathed, and
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: some went down, like senile suns that grapple with the
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: dark and reel inflamed tremendous and our stell ebbing. The
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: battle left those elder gods upcast once more on coasts
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: of black defeat, grept in despair, a vaster tourme artus.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: The victor gods, their storms and thunders spent, went dwindling
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: northward like embattled clouds, And where the lingering haze of
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: fight dissolved, the pallor of the dawn began to spread
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: on darkness purple, like the pain of death. Ringed with
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: that desolation, Saturn stood mute, and the Titans answered unto
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: him with brother silence, motionless. They seemed some peristyle or
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: arrange of Column's grate, alone, enduring of a fallen fane
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: in deserts of some vaster world, whence life and faith
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: have vanished long that vaguely slips to an imemoried end,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: and twilight slow crept round those lofty shapes August and
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: seemed such as might be the faltering, ghostly noon of
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: mightier suns that taught her down to death. Then turned
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: they passing from that dismal place, blasted anew with battle.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: Ere the swift striding of light athwart stupendous chasms and
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: wasteful plains should overtake them. There bowed with too heavy
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: a burden of defeat. Slowly they turned and passed upon
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: the west, where, like a weariness, immovable in menace, huge
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: the plain, its monstrous bulk, the peaks, its hyde are heads,
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: the whole world crouched against their march with the diminished stars.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 7: Phinis by Clark Ashton Smith, Redthlibrivox dot Org by Shakira
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 7: s Earl. It seemed that from the west, the live
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 7: red flame of sunset, eating the dead blue sky and cold,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 7: insensate peaks, was loosened slowly and fell above it. A
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 7: few red stars burned down like low candle flames, into
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 7: the gaunt black sockets of the chill insensible mountains. But
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 7: in the ascendant skies, cloudless, like some vast corpse, unfeatured
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 7: cerementless succeeded nor star nor planet. It may have been
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 7: that black, pulseless, dead stars arose and cross'd as of
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 7: old the heavens, but came no living orb nor comet,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 7: seeming the ghost homeless of an outcast world seeking its
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 7: former place that is no more nor shall be in
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 7: all the cosmos again null, blank and meaningless, as a
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 7: burnt scroll that blackens. With the passing of the fire,
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 7: lay the dead, infinite sky lo in the halls of time.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 7: I thought, the torches are out, the revelry of the gods,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 7: or lamentation of demons for which their flames were lit
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 7: over and quiet at last, with the closing peace of night,
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 7: whose dumb, dead, passionless skies enfold the living world as
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 7: the sea a sinking pebble. End of poem. This recording
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 7: is in the public domain. The Star Treader and other
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 7: poems by Clark Ashton Smith.
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 11: The Mask of the Forsaken Gods by Clark Ashton Smith,
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 11: read for Lovervox dot Org by Mary Kay, by.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: Lucretia b by Rosslyn Carlyle, by Jamie Hamilton, by.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 6: Jennifer Dolman, by Gregg Giardano, and by to Cure a soul.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 11: Scene a moonlit glade on a summer midnight, the poet.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 12: What consummation of the toiling moon o'er comes the midnight
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 12: blue with violet, wherein the stars turn gray. The summer's
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 12: green edged and strong by day, is dull and faint
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 12: beneath the moon's all dominating mood, that, in this absence
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 12: of the impassioned sun sways to a sleep of sound
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 12: and calm of color, The live and vivid aspect of
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 12: the world subdued, as with the great expectancy which blurs
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 12: beginning features of a dream, things and events lost neath
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 12: an omening of central and oppressive bulk. To come here
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 12: were the theater of a miracle, if such within a
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 12: world long alienate from its first dreams and shad with
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 12: skeptic years, might now befall the philosopher.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: The Huntress rides no more across the upturned faces of
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: the stars, tis but the dead shell of a frozen world,
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: glittering with desolation. Earth's old gods, the gods that haunt
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: like dreams each planets youth, are fled from years, incredulous
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: and tired, with penetrating of successive masks that give but
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: emptiness they served to hide remains not faith enough to
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: bring them back. Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon,
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: and all the visions that made populace, an eager world
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: where time grows weary in yet youth that lives might
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: for a little claim the pantheon of dream on such
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: a night, when neath the growing marvel of the moon,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: the films of time were perilously thin, and thought looks
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: backward to the simpler years, till all the vision seems
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: but just beyond. If one have faith, it may be
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: that he shall behold the gods once only, and no more,
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: because of time's inhospitality, for which they may not stay.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 12: The poet within the marvel of the light, what flower
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 12: of active wonder from quiescent springs?
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 3: Is it?
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 12: A throng of luminous white clouds, phantoms of some old storms,
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 12: death driven titans that float beneath the moon and speak
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 12: with voices like the last echoes of a thunder span
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 12: tis the forsaken gods that when a foothold about the
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 12: magic circle which the moon draws like some old enchantress
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 12: round the glade.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: The philosopher, I see them not. The vision is addressed
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: only to thine acute and eager youth.
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 13: Jove, All heaven and earth were once my throne. Now
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 13: I have but the wind alone for shifting judgment seat,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 13: the pillared walls supported me. Yet Man's old incredulity, but
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 13: nothing for my feet pan Man hath forgotten me. Yet
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 13: seems it that my memory saddens the wistful voices of
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 13: the wood within each Earth's frequented spot. Echo forgets my music,
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 13: not nor earth my tread, where trampling years have stood Artemis.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 6: Time hath grown cold toward beauty. Loved of old, The
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 6: gods must quake when dreams and hopes forsake the heart
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 6: of man, and disillusions ban more chill than stone rears
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 6: to the former throne of loveliness is dark and tenantless.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 6: Now I must weep homeless within the deep, where once
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 6: of old mine orbed chariot rolled and morn in vain
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 6: Man's immemorial pain, uncomforted of light and beauty fled Apollo.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: Time wearied of my song, as satiate and capricious king,
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: who for his pleasure bade me sing first of his
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: minstrel throng tell Cloyd with melody, His ear grew faint
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: to voice and lire, forgotten, nain of Time's desire. His
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: thought was void of me.
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 11: Aphrodite Ay, born of sound and foam child of the sea,
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 11: and wind was fire upon mankind fuelled with Syria and
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 11: with Greece and Rome. Time fanned me with his breath.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 11: Love found new warmth in me, and life at sexstasy
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 11: till I grew deadly with the wind of death.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 14: A nymph. How can the world be still so beautiful
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 14: when beauty's self is fled? Tis like the mute and
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 14: marble loveliness of some dead girl. And we that hover
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 14: here are as the spirit of former voice and motion
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 14: and live color, and that which shall not stir nor
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 14: speak again another nymph.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: Nay, rather say, this lovely, lifeless world is but a
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: rigid semblance, counterfeiting the world which was. Nor have the
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: gods retained such power as once informed and rendered vital
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: the cryptic irresponsiveness of stone, that statue which Pygmalion made.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 7: And loved Artie I, who was discord among men alone
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 7: of all times hierarchy, find that time hath no need
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 7: of me, no luck that I might fill again.
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 12: The poet again tell me, O, gods are ye forever
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 12: doomed to fall and flutter among spatial winds, finding release
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 12: nor foothold anywhere, debarred from doors, of all the suns,
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 12: like spirits whose names are blotted from the lists of time,
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 12: though they themselves yet wander undestroyed.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 15: The gods together thromless, discrowned and impotent in man's sad disillusionment,
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 15: we passed with Earth's returnless youth. Who are the semblence
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 15: of truth, the veils that hid, the vacantness, infinite, naked, meaningless,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 15: the blank and universal SLINKs each world beholds at last
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 15: and sinks new gods protect while the gaze of man,
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 15: each one of veil.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 6: The days till the new.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 16: Gods discredited, like mist that melts with noon, are fled
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 16: that par oppressive, limitless, the tyranny of nothingness. Our power
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 16: is dead upon the earth with the first dews and
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 16: dawns at a time. But in the far and younger
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 16: class of other worlds it hath three birth yea, though
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 16: we find not entrance here, astray, like feathers.
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 7: On the wind, to neither Earth nor Heaven. Consigned fresh
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 7: altars in a distant sphere are keen with fragrance, bright
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 7: with fire, new hearts to warm us from the night
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 7: till banished dence, we pass in light, while all the
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 7: flames of dream expire.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 11: End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 11: The Star Treader and Other Poems by Clark Ashton Smith