Clark Ashton Smith

January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961

The Pursuer

Climbing from out what nadir-fountained sea,
From nether incarnations none may sound—
Sealed with the night of suns, forever bound
With frozen systems—comest thou to me,
Despair, whose darker name in memory
I know not, bringing from the dead profound,
With cerernents and sepulchral purples wound,
The fouIness of thine immortality?

O shape of loathIier horrors, here untold,
Have I not climbed secure from their abyss,
Those lower spheres, those limbos dire and old ?
Thou tearest me beyond the hells of this,
Down chasms dreadful for the light of tears
Where worm-like terror crawls in the undead years !
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