O Fairest, O dearest, to what shall I liken thy days? Methinks are as precious gems, as pearls and amethysts, which, from a broken string, some idle princess, sitting on her barge of ivory and gold, lets fall one in to the bottomless blue and placid sea. Mine, alas, are as teardrops, falling incessantly into the gulf so deep and dark that no sound, no echo, nor any gleam or reflection, returns from its unknowable and sinister abyss.

From: Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. Steve Behrends, Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman. Greenwood Press 1989.