Song of the Necromancer by Clark Ashton Smith


I will repeat a subtle rune—

And thronging suns of Otherwhere

Shall blaze upon the blinded air,

And spectres terrible and fair

Shall wake the riven world at noon.


The star that was mine empery

In dust upon unwinnowed skies:

But primal dreams have made me wise,

And soon the shattered years shall rise

To my remembered sorcery.


To mantic mutterings, brief and low,

My palaces shall lift amain,

My bowers bloom; I will regain

The lips whereon my lips have lain

In rose-red twilights long ago.

Before my murmured exorcism

The world, a wispy wraith, shall flee:

A stranger earth, a weirder sea,

People with shapes of Fäery,

Shall swell upon the waste abysm.


The pantheons of darkened stars

Shall file athwart the crocus dawn;

Goddess and Gorgon, Lar and faun,

Shall tread the amaranthine lawn,

And giants fight their thunderous wars.



Like graven mountains of basalt,

Dark idols of my demons there

Shall tower through bright zones of air,

Fronting the sun with level stare;

And hell shall pave my deepest vault.


Phantom and fiend and sorceror

Shall serve me...till my term shall pass,

And I become no more, alas,

Than a frail shadow on the glass

Before some latter conjurer.

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