Ebony and Crystal/The Medusa of Despair

by Clark Ashton Smith

THE MEDUSA OF DESPAIR

I may not mask forever with the graceOf woven flow'rs thine eyes of staring store:Ere fatally I front thee, fully knownThe guarded horror of thy haggard face,Thy visage carven from the heart long deadOf some white, frozen star; ere thou astoundMy life to thine own likeness, and confound—Depart, and curse more kindred things instead:

Triumphant, through what realms of elder doomWhere even the swart vans of Time are stunned,Seek thou some fit, Cimmerian citadel,And mighty cities, desolate, unsunned,Whose walls of horrent and enormous gloomMake sharp the horizon of the light of hell!