Song (Vagrant)

Clark Ashton Smith

Vagrant from the realms of rose,
Love has flown where no man knows:
Though your fleetest witch should bind
With her hair the April wind,
Love is still to seek and find.

Though your eldest necromant
Raise again with solemn chant
All the ghostly girls of yore,
Crowned with blossoms thin and frore,
Vagrant love returns no more.

Though the sirens sing for him
On ulterior isles made dim
With the foam of ultimate seas,
All beyond the Hesperides,
Love shall pass unseen of these.

Though you find in fields of morn
Blossoms of their dews forlorn,
And the grieving grasses bent
By the latest way he went,
Errant still and uncontent;

Though you seek from door to door
Through the city's wrath and roar;
Scan the phantom faces wan
Of the masquers mute with dawn—
Always love has come-and gone.

Though a lonely trail you tread,
Past the rim of autumn's red,
Ending on the moonlit snows—
Love has flown where no man knows,
Vagrant from the realms of rose.

Printed from: eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/521
Printed on: March 29, 2024