The Knoll

Clark Ashton Smith

All rimmed around with halcyon skies,
Filled with blue air and butterflies,
Mightily arched and intervalled,
And leaved with solemn emerald,
The century-lichened oaks arise

From this high knoll against the brine
Like those about Dodona's shrine:
For here Apollo still is god
And living dryads tread the sod
And love is Grecian and divine.

Not hidden with sad dreams of ill
Where Venus holds her vaulted hill,
For us the two, for us the three,
Here dwells the fair antiquity
Glad and august and pagan still.

And here how often has the sun
Brightened on breast and hair of One. . .
But never has the sun or shade
Amply and long enough delayed
For love that dreads oblivion. . . .

What shall the sealed horizons hold
For us, on future hills, untold—
The three, the two, that tarried here
Through azure mornings, hushed and dear,
And afternoons of forfeit gold?

Haply, by some dark ocean-stream,
These days shall dawn again in dream;
Through films of distance and of tears
We shall behold, in wintered years,
These butterflies that flit and gleam.

Printed from: eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/274
Printed on: December 27, 2024