Don Quixote on Market Street

←

Don Quixote on Market Street (1951)
by Clark Ashton Smith

→

sister projects: Wikidata item

First published in The Dark Chateau and Other Poems (1951).

1437976Don Quixote on Market Street1951Clark Ashton Smith

Layout 2

Don Quixote on Market Street

Riding on Rosinante where the carsWith dismal unremitting clangors pass,And people move like curbless energumensRowelled by fiends of fury back and forth,Behold! Quixote comes, in battered mail,Armgaunt, with eyes of some keen haggard hawkFar from his eyrie. Gazing right and left,Over his face a lightning of disdainFlushes, and limns the hollowness of cheeksBronzed by the suns of battle; and his handTightens beneath its gauntlet on the lanceAs if some foe had challenged him, or sightOf unredressed wrong provoked his ire…..

Brave spectre, what chimera shares thy saddle,Pointing thee to this place? Thy tale is told,The high, proud legend of all causes lost—A quenchless torch emblazoning black ages.Go hence, deluded paladin: there isNo honor here, nor glory, to be won.Knight of La Mancha, turn thee to the past,Amid its purple marches ride for aye,Nor tilt with thunder-driven iron millsThat shall grind on to silence. ChivalryHas flown to stars unsooted by the fumesThat have befouled these heavens, and romanceDeparting, will unfurl her oriflammesOn towers unbuilded in an age to be.Waste not thy knightliness in wars unworthy,For time and his alastors shall destroyFull soon, and bring to stuffless, cloudy ruinAll things that fret thy spirit, riding downThis pass with pandemonian walls, this HinnomWhere Moloch and where Mammon herd the doomed.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) before 1964, and copyright was not renewed.

For Class A renewal records (books only) published between 1923 and 1963, check the Stanford University Copyright Renewal Database.
For other renewal records of publications between 1922–1950, see the University of Pennsylvania copyright records.
For all records since 1978, search the U.S. Copyright Office records.

Works could have had their copyright renewed between January 1st of the 27th year after publication or registration and December 31st of the 28th year. As this work's copyright was not renewed, it entered the public domain on January 1st of the 29th year.

This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

It is imperative that contributors ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse