Clark Ashton Smith

January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961

Pour Chercher Du Nouveau

Call up the lordly daemon that in Cimmeria dwells
Amid the vaults untrodden, long-sealed with lethal spells,
Amid the untouched waters of Lemur-warded wells.

Call up the wiser genius who knows and understands
The lore of night and limbo, who finds in tomb-dark lands
The pearls and shells and wreckage that strew the dawnless strands—

Remnants of elder cargoes, lost, enigmatic spars
From seas without horizon, washing occulted stars,
From shadow-sunken cycles of vaster calendars.

Call up the vagrant daemon, whose vans have haply strayed
Through subterranean heavens by dead Anubis bayed,
Who has seen abysmal evil, aloof and undismayed;

Beholding fouler phantoms no necromancer wakes,
Reptilian bulks that cumber the thick putrescent lakes,
And pterodactyls brooding their nests in charnel brakes;

Hearing the unspent anger of troglodyte and Goth,
The rote of gods abolished, the moan of Ashtaroth,
The hunger and the fury of famished Behemoth.

Call up the sapient daemon, whose eyes have haply read
The cipher-graven portals in planets of the dead,
Who knows the dark apastrons of stars for ever sped;

Who has seen the lost eidola hewn from no earthly stone,
The untrusting magic mirrors, in chambers chill and lone,
That hold supernal faces from heavens overthrown;

Who has heard the vatic voices of witch-wrought teraphim,
The wailing fires of Moloch, the flames that swirl and swim
Around the blood-black altars of ravening Baalim;

Who bas heard the sands of ocean, far-sifted on the beach,
Repeating crystal echoes of some sidereal speech;
Who bas heard the atoms telling their legend each to each.

Call up the errant daemon, the pilgrim of strange lands,
And he will come, arising from shadow-tided strands,
With gifts of bale and beauty and wonder in his hands.
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