Ebony and Crystal/The Hashish-Eater

by Clark Ashton Smith

THE HASHISH-EATER;
or, THE APOCALYPSE OF EVIL

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;I crown me with the million-coloured sunOf secret worlds incredible, and takeTheir trailing skies for vestment, when I soar,Throned on the mounting zenith, and illumeThe spaceward-flown horizons infinite.Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,By jealous moons maleficently urgedTo follow me forever; mountains hornedWith peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawedWith sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;And continents of serpent-shapen trees,With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fireBy that supreme ascendance. Sorcerers,And evil kings predominantly armedWith scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin, whereonAre worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,With foam-light songs from silver fragrance wrought,Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moonsWhere viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,With antic gnomes abominably wise,Heave up their icy horns across my way:But naught deters me from the goal ordainedBy suns, and aeons, and immortal wars,And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose nameIs all the secret of forgotten glyphs,By sinful gods in torrid rubies writFor ending of a brazen book; the goalWhereat my soaring ecstacy may stand, In amplest heavens multiplied to holdMy hordes of thunder-vested avatars,And Promethèan armies of my thought,That brandish claspèd levins. There I callMy memories, intolerably cladIn light the peaks of paradise may wear,And lead the Armageddon of my dreams,Whose instant shout of triumph is becomeImmensity's own music: For their feetAre founded on innumerable worlds,Remote in alien epochs, and their armsUpraised, are columns potent to exaltWith ease ineffable the countless thronesOf all the gods that are and gods to be,Or bear the seats of Asmadai and SetAbove the seventh paradise.

SupremeIn culminant omniscience manifold,And served by senses multitudinous,Far-posted on the shifting walls of time,With eyes that roam the star-unwinnowed fieldsOf utter night and chaos, I convokeThe Babel of their visions, and attendAt once their myriad witness: I behold,In Ombos, where the fallen Titans dwell,With mountain-builded walls, and gulfs for moat,The secret cleft that cunning dwarves have dugBeneath an alp-like buttress; and I list,Too late, the clang of adamantine gongs,Dinned by their drowsy guardians, whose feetHave felt the wasp-like sting of little knives,Embrued with slobber of the basilisk,Or juice of wounded upas. And I see,In gardens of a crimson-litten worldThe sacred flow'r with lips of purple flesh,And silver-lashed, vermilion-lidded eyesOf torpid azure; whom his furtive priests.At moonless eve in terror seek to slay, With bubbling grails of sacrificial bloodThat hide a hueless poison. And I read,Upon the tongue of a forgotten sphinx,The annuling word a spiteful demon wroteWith gall of slain chimeras; and I knowWhat pentacles the lunar wizards use,That once allured the gulf-returning roc,With ten great wings of furlèd storm, to pauseMidmost an alabaster mount; and there,With boulder-weighted webs of dragons'-gut,Uplift by cranes a captive giant built,They wound the monstrous, moonquake-throbbing bird,And plucked, from off his sabre-taloned feet,Uranian sapphires fast in frozen blood,With amethysts from Mars. I lean to read,With slant-lipped mages, in an evil star,The monstrous archives of a war that ranThrough wasted aeons, and the prophecyOf wars renewed, that shall commemorateSome enmity of wivern-headed kings,Even to the brink of time. I know the bloomsOf bluish fungus, freaked with mercury,That bloat within the craters of the moon,And in one still, selenic hour have shrunkTo pools of slime and fetor; and I knowWhat clammy blossoms, blanched and cavern-grown,Are proffered in Uranus to their godsBy mole-eyed peoples; and the livid seedOf some black fruit a king in Saturn ate,Which, cast upon his tinkling palace-floor,Took root between the burnished flags, and nowHath mounted, and become a hellish tree,Whose lithe and hairy branches, lined with mouths,Net like a hundred ropes his lurching throne,And strain at starting pillars. I beholdThe slowly-thronging corals, that usurpSome harbour of a million-masted sea,And sun them on the league-long wharves of gold— Bulks of enormous crimson, kraken-limbedAnd kraken-headed, lifting up as crownsThe octiremes of perished emperors,And galleys fraught with royal gems, that sailedFrom a sea-deserted haven.Swifter growThe visions: Now a mighty city looms,Hewn from a hill of purest cinnabar,To domes and turrets like a sunrise throngedWith tier on tier of captive moons, half-drownedIn shifting erubescence. But whose handsWere sculptors of its doors, and columns wroughtTo semblance of prodigious blooms of old,No eremite hath lingered there to say,And no man comes to learn: For long agoA prophet came, warning its timid kingAgainst the plague of lichens that had creptAcross subverted empires, and the sandOf wastes that Cyclopean mountains ward;Which, slow and ineluctable, would come,To take his fiery bastions and his fanes,And quench his domes with greenish tetter. NowI see a host of naked giants, armedWith horns of behemoth and unicorn,Who wander, blinded by the clinging spellsOf hostile wizardry, and stagger onTo forests where the very leaves have eyes,And ebonies like wrathful dragons roarTo teaks a-chuckle in the loathly gloom;Where coiled lianas lean, with serried fangs,From writhing palms with swollen boles that moan;Where leeches of a scarlet moss have suckedThe eyes of some dead monster, and have crawledTo bask upon his azure-spotted spine;Where hydra-throated blossoms hiss and sing,Or yawn with mouths that drip a sluggish dew,Whose touch is death and slow corrosion. Then,I watch a war of pigmies, met by night,With pitter of their drums of parrot's hide, On plains with no horizon, where a godMight lose his way for centuries; and there,In wreathèd light, and fulgors all convolved,A rout of green, enormous moons ascend,With rays that like a shivering venom runOn inch-long swords of lizard-fang.SurveyedFrom this my throne, as from a central sun,The pageantries of worlds and cycles pass;Forgotten splendours, dream by dream unfold,Like tapestry, and vanish; violet suns,Or suns of changeful iridescence, bringTheir rays about me, like the coloured lightsImploring priests might lift to glorifyThe face of some averted god; the songsOf mystic poets in a purple world,Ascend to me in music that is madeFrom unconceivèd perfumes, and the pulseOf love ineffable; the lute-playersWhose lutes are strung with gold of the utmost moon,Call forth delicious languors, never knownSave to their golden kings; the sorcerersOf hooded stars inscrutable to God,Surrender me their demon-wrested scrolls,Inscribed with lore of monstrous alchemies,And awful transformations.***If I will,I am at once the vision and the seer,And mingle with my ever-streaming pomps,And still abide their suzerain: I amThe neophyte who serves a nameless god,Within whose fane the fanes of HecatompylosWere arks the Titan worshippers might bear,Or flags to pave the threshold; or I amThe god himself, who calls the fleeing cloudsInto the nave where suns might congregate,And veils the darkling mountain of his faceWith fold on solemn fold; for whom the priestsAmass their monthly hecatomb of gems—Opals that are a camel-cumbering load, And monstrous alabraundines, won from warWith realms of hostile serpents; which arise,Combustible, in vapours many-hued,And myrrh-excelling perfumes. It is I,The king, who holds with scepter-dropping handThe helm of some great barge of chrysolite,Sailing upon an amethystine seaTo isles of timeless summer: For the snowsOf hyperborean winter, and their winds,Sleep in his jewel-builded capital,Nor any charm of flame-wrought wizardry,Nor conjured suns may rout them; so he flees,With captive kings to urge his serried oars,Hopeful of dales where amaranthine dawnHath never left the faintly sighing loteAnd fields of lisping moly. Or I fare,Impanoplied with azure diamond,As hero of a quest Achernar lights,To deserts filled with ever-wandering flames,That feed upon the sullen marl, and soarTo wrap the slopes of mountains, and to leap,With tongues intolerably lengthening,That lick the blenchèd heavens. But there lives(Secure as in a garden walled from wind)A lonely flower by a placid well,Midmost the flaring tumult of the flames,That roar as roars the storm-possessèd sea,Impacable forever: And withinThat simple grail the blossom lifts, there liesOne drop of an incomparable dew,Which heals the parchèd weariness of kings,And cures the wound of wisdom. I am pageTo an emperor who reigns ten thousand years,And through his labyrinthine palace-rooms,Through courts and colonnades and balconiesWherein immensity itself is mazed,I seek the golden gorget he hath lost,On which the names of his conniving stars Are writ in little sapphires; and I roamFor centuries, and hear the brazen clocksInnumerably clang with such a soundAs brazen hammers make, by devils dinnedOn tombs of all the dead; and nevermoreI find the gorget, but at length I findA sealèd room whose nameless prisonerMoans with a nameless torture, and would turnTo hell's red rack as to a lilied couchFrom that whereon they stretched him; and I find,Prostrate upon a lotus-painted floor,The loveliest of all beloved slavesMy emperor hath, and from her pulseless sideA serpent rises, whiter than the rootOf some venefic bloom in darkness grown,And gazes up with green-lit eyes that seemLike drops of cold, congealing poison.***

Hark!What word was whispered in a tongue unknown,In crypts of some impenetrable world?Whose is the dark, dethroning secrecyI cannot share, though I am king of sunsAnd king therewith of strong eternity,Whose gnomons with their swords of shadow guardMy gates, and slay the intruder? Silence loadsThe wind of ether, and the worlds are stillTo hear the word that flees me. All my dreamsFall like a rack of fuming vapours raisedTo semblance by a necromant, and leaveSpirit and sense unthinkably alone,Above a universe of shrouded stars,And suns that wander, cowled with sullen gloom,Like witches to a Sabbath.***Fear is bornIn crypts below the nadir, and hath crawledReaching the floor of space and waits for wingsTo lift it upward, like a hellish wormFain for the flesh of seraphs. Eyes that gleam,But are not eyes of suns or galaxies, Gather and throng to the base of darkness; flameBehind some black, abysmal curtain burns,Implacable, and fanned to whitest wrathBy raised wings that flail the whiffled gloom,And make a brief and broken wind that moans,As one who rides a throbbing rack. There isA Thing that crouches, worlds and years remote,Whose horns a demon sharpens, rasping forthA note to shatter the donjon-keeps of time,And crack the sphere of crystal.***All is darkFor ages, and my tolling heart suspendsIts clamour, as within the clutch of death,Tightening with tense, hermetic rigours. Then,In one enormous, million-flashing flame,The stars unveil, the suns remove their cowls,And beam to their responding planets; timeIs mine once more, and armies of its dreamsRally to that insuperable throne,Firmed on the central zenith.

Now I seekThe meads of shining moly I had foundIn some remoter vision, by a streamNo cloud hath ever tarnished; where the sun,A gold Narcissus, loiters evermoreAbove his golden image: But I findA corpse the ebbing water will not keep,With eyes like sapphires that have lain in hell,And felt the hissing embers; and the flow'rsAbout me turn to hooded serpents, swayedBy flutes of devils in a hellish dance,Meet for the nod of Satan, when he reignsAbove the raging Sabbath, and is wooedBy sarabands of witches. But I turnTo mountains guarding with their horns of snowThe source of that befoulèd rill, and seekA pinnacle where none but eagles climb,And they with failing pennons. But in vain I flee, for on that pylon of the sky,Some curse hath turned the unprinted snow to flame—Red fires that curl and cluster to my tread,Trying the summit's narrow cirque. And now,I see a silver python far beneath—Vast as a river that a fiend hath witched,And forced to flow remèant in its course.To fountains whence it issued. RapidlyIt winds from slope to crumbling slope, and fillsRavines and chasmal gorges, till the cragsTotter with coil on coil incumbent. SoonIt hath entwined the pinnacle I keep,And gapes with a fanged, unfathomable maw,Wherein great Typhon, and Enceladus,Were orts of daily glut. But I am gone,For at my call a hippogriff hath come,And firm between his thunder-beating wings,I mount the sheer cerulean walls of noon,And see the earth, a spurnèd pebble, fallLost in the fields of nether stars—and seekA planet where the outwearied wings of timeMight pause and furl for respite, or the plumesOf death be stayed, and loiter in reprieveAbove some deathless lily: For therein,Beauty hath found an avatar of flow'rs—Blossoms that clothe it as a coloured flame,From peak to peak, from pole to sullen pole,And turn the skies to perfume. There I findA lonely castle, calm and unbeset,Save by the purple spears of amaranth,And tender-sworded iris. Walls upbuiltOf flushèd marble, wonderful with rose,And domes like golden bubbles, and minaretsThat take the clouds as coronal—these are mine,For voiceless looms the peaceful barbican,And the heavy-teethed portcullis hangs aloftAs if to smile a welcome. So I leaveMy hippogriff to crop the magic meads, And pass into a court the lilies hold,And tread them to a fragrance that pursuesTo win the portico, whose columns, carvedOf lazuli and amber, mock the palmsOf bright, Aidennie forests—capitalledWith fronds of stone fretted to airy lace,Enfolding drupes that seem as tawny clustersOf breasts of unknown houris; and convolvedWith vines of shut and shadowy-leavèd flow'rs,Like the dropt lids of women that endureSome loin-dissolving rapture. Through a doorEnlaid with lilies twined luxuriously,I enter, dazed and blinded with the sun,And hear, in gloom that changing colours cloud,A chuckle sharp as crepitating ice,Upheaved and cloven by shoulders of the damnedWho strive in Antenora. When my eyesUndazzle, and the cloud of colour fades,I find me in a monster-guarded room,Where marble apes with wings of griffins crowdOn walls an evil sculptor wrought, and beastsWherein the sloth and vampire-bat unite,Pendulous by their toes of tarnished bronze,Usurp the shadowy interval of lampsThat hang from ebon arches. Like a ripple,Borne by the wind from pool to sluggish poolIn fields where wide Cocytus flows his bound,A crackling smile around that circle runs,And all the stone-wrought gibbons stare at meWith eyes that turn to glowing coals. A fearThat found no name in Babel, flings me on,Breathless and faint with horror, to a hallWithin whose weary, self-reverting round,The languid curtains, heavier than palls,Unnumerably depict a weary king,Who fain would cool his jewel-crusted handsIn lakes of emerald evening, or the fieldsOf dreamless poppies pure with rain. I fleeOnward, and all the shadowy curtains shake With tremors of a silken-sighing mirth,And whispers of the innumerable king,Breathing a tale of ancient pestilence,Whose very words are vile contagion. ThenI reach a room where caryatides,Carved in the form of tall, voluptuous Titan women,Surround a throne of flowering ebonyWhere creeps a vine of crystal. On the throne,There lolls a wan, enormous Worm, whose bulk,Tumid with all the rottenness of kings,O'erflows its arms with fold on creasèd foldOf fat obscenely bloating. Open-mouthedHe leans, and from his throat a score of tongues,Depending like to wreaths of torpid vipers,Drivel with phosphorescent slime, that runsDown all his length of soft and monstrous folds,And creeping among the flow'rs of ebony,Lends them the life of tiny serpents. Now,Ere the Horror ope those red and lashless slitsOf eyes that draw the gnat and midge, I turn,And follow down a dusty hall, whose gloom,Lined by the statues with their mighty limbs,Ends in a golden-roofed balconySphering the flowered horizon.Ere my heartHath hushed the panic tumult of its pulses,I listen, from beyond the horizon's rim,A mutter faint as when the far simoon,Mounting from unknown deserts, opens forth,Wide as the waste, those wings of torrid nightThat fling the doom of cities from their folds,And musters in its van a thousand winds,That with disrooted palms for besoms, riseAnd sweep the sands to fury. As the storm,Approaching, mounts and loudens to the earsOf them that toil in fields of sesame,So grows the mutter, and a shadow creepsAbove the gold horizon, like a dawn Of darkness climbing sunward. Now they come,A Sabbath of abominable shapes,Led by the fiends and lamiae of worldsThat owned my sway aforetime! Cockatrice,Python, tragelaphus, leviathan,Chimera, martichoras, behemoth,Geryon and sphinx, and hydra, on my kenArise as might some Afrite-builded city,Consummate in the lifting of a lash,With thundrous domes and sounding obelisks,And towers of night and fire alternate! WingsOf white-hot stone along the hissing wind,Bear up the huge and furnace-hearted beastsOf hells beyond Rutilicus; and thingsWhose lightless length would meet the gyre of moons—Born from the caverns of a dying sun,Uncoil to the very zenith, half disclosedFrom gulfs below the horizon; octopiLike blazing moons with countless arms of fire,Climb from the seas of ever-surging flameThat roll and roar through planets unconsumed,Beating on coasts of unknown metals; beastsThat range the mighty worlds of Alioth, rise,Aforesting the heavens with multitudinous horns,Within whose maze the winds are lost; and borneOn cliff-like brows of plunging scolopendras,The shell-wrought tow'rs of ocean-witches loom,And griffin-mounted gods, and demons thronedOn sable dragons, and the cockodrillsThat bear the spleenful pygmies on their backs;And blue-faced wizards from the worlds of Saiph,On whom Titanic scorpions fawn; and armiesThat move with fronts reverted from the foe,And strike athwart their shoulders at the shapesTheir shields reflect in crystal; and eidolaFashioned within unfathomable cavesBy hands of eyeless peoples; and the blindAnd worm-shaped monsters of a sunless world,With krakens from the ultimate abyss, And Demogorgons of the outer dark,Arising, shout with multitudinous thunders,And threatening me with dooms ineffableIn words whereat the heavens leap to flame,Advance on the magic palace! Thrown before,For league on league, their blasting shadows blightAnd eat like fire the amaranthine meads,Leaving an ashen desert! In the palace,I hear the apes of marble shriek and howl,And all the women-shapen columns moan,Babbling with unknown terror. In my fear,A monstrous dread unnamed in any hell,I rise, and flee with the fleeing wind for wings,And in a trice the magic palace reels,And spiring to a single tow'r of flame,Goes out, and leaves nor shard nor ember! FlownBeyond the world, beyond that fleeing wind,I reach the gulf's irrespirable verge,Where fails the strongest storm for breath and fall,Supportless, through the nadir-plungèd gloom,Beyond the scope and vision of the sun,To other skies and systems. In a worldDeep-wooded with the multi-coloured fungi,That soar to semblance of fantastic palms,I fall as falls the meteor-stone, and breakA score of trunks to powder. All unhurt,I rise, and through the illimitable woods,Among the trees of flimsy opal, roam,And see their tops that clamber, hour by hour,To touch the suns of iris. Things unseen,Whose charnel breath informs the tideless airWith spreading pools of fetor, follow meElusive past the ever-changing palms;And pittering moths, with wide and ashen wings,Flit on before, and insects ember-hued,Descending, hurtle through the gorgeous gloom,And quench themselves in crumbling thickets. HeardFar-off, the gong-like roar of beasts unknownResounds at measured intervals of time, Shaking the riper trees to dust, that fallsIn clouds of acrid perfume, stifling meBeneath a pall of iris.Now the palmsGrow far apart and lessen momentlyTo shrubs a dwarf might topple. Over themI see an empty desert, all ablazeWith amethysts and rubies, and the dustOf garnets or carnelians. On I roam,Treading the gorgeous grit, that dazzles meWith leaping waves of endless rutilance,Whereby the air is turned to a crimson gloom,Through which I wander, blind as any Kobold;Till underfoot the griding sands give placeTo stone or metal, with a massive ringMore welcome to mine ears than golden bells,Or tinkle of silver fountains. When the gloomOf crimson lifts, I stand upon the edgeOf a broad black plain of adamant, that reaches,Level as a windless water, to the vergeOf all the world; and through the sable plain,A hundred streams of shattered marble run,And streams of broken steel, and streams of bronze,Like to the ruin of all the wars of time,To plunge, with clangour of timeless cataracts,Adown the gulfs eternal.So I follow,Between a river of steel and a river of bronze,With ripples loud and tuneless as the clashOf a million lutes; and come to the precipiceFrom which they fall, and make the mighty soundOf a million swords that meet a million shields,Or din of spears and armour in the warsOf all the worlds and aeons: Far beneath,They fall, through gulfs and cycles of the void,And vanish like a stream of broken stars,Into the nether darkness; nor the godsOf any sun, nor demons of the gulf,Will dare to know what everlasting sea Is fed thereby, and mounts forevermoreWith mighty tides unebbing.Lo, what cloud,Or night of sudden and supreme eclipse,Is on the suns of opal? At my side,The rivers run with a wan and ghostly gleam,Through darkness falling as the night that fallsFrom mighty spheres extinguished! Turning now,I see, betwixt the desert and the suns,The poisèd wings of all the dragon-rout,Far-flown in black occlusion thousand-foldThrough stars, and deeps, and devastated worlds,Upon my trail of terror! Griffins, rocs,And sluggish, dark chimeras, heavy-wingedAfter the ravin of dispeopled lands,With harpies, and the vulture-birds of hell—Hot from abominable feasts and fainTo cool their beaks and talons in my blood—All, all have gathered, and the wingless rear,With rank on rank of foul, colossal Worms,Like pillars of embattled night and flame,Looms on the wide horizon! From the van,I hear the shriek of wyvers, loud and shrillAs tempests in a broken fane, and roarOf sphinxes, like the unrelenting tollOf bells from tow'rs infernal. Cloud on cloud,They arch the zenith, and a dreadful windFalls from them like the wind before the storm,And in the wind my cloven garment streams,And flutters in the face of all the void,Even as flows a flaffing spirit, lostOn the Pit's undying tempest! Louder growsThe thunder of the streams of stone and bronze,—Redoubled with the roar of torrent wings,Inseparably mingled. Scarce I keepMy footing, in the gulfward winds of fear,And mighty thunders, beating to the voidIn sea-like waves incessant; and would fleeWith them, and prove the nadir-founded night Where fall the streams of ruin; but when I reachThe verge, and seek through sun-defeating gloom,To measure with my gaze the dread descent,I see a tiny star within the depths—A light that stays me, while the wings of doomConvene their thickening thousands: For the starIncreases, taking to its hueless orb,With all the speed of horror-changèd dreamsThe light as of a million million moons;And floating up through gulfs and glooms eclipsed,It grows and grows, a huge white eyeless Face,That fills the void and fills the universe,And bloats against the limits of the worldWith lips of flame that open.****