Clark Ashton Smith

January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961

To The Chimera

Unknown chimera, take us, for we tire
Amid the known monotony of things !
Descend, and bearing sunward with bright wings
Our mounful weariness and sad desire,

Pause not to prove the opal shores untrod,
Below thee fading, and the fields of rose ;
Till on thy horns of planished silver flows
The sanguine light of Edens lost to God.

There, for the weary sense insatiate,
Primeval sleep from towering scarlet blooms
Would fall in slow and infinite perfumes;

Or we could leave thy crystal wings elate—
Riding the pagan plain with knees that press
The golden flanks of some great centauress.
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