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Weird Tales/Volume 36/Issue 2/The Owls

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Charles Baudelaire1394488The Owls1941Clark Ashton Smith
The Owls
The Owls


(From the French of Charles P. Baudelaire)


Translated by


TIMEUS GAYLORD


In shelter of the vaulted yews,
Like alien gods who shun the world,
The flown owls wait with feathers furled;
Darting red eyes, they dream and muse.

In rows unmoving they remain
Till the sad hour that they remember,
When, treading down the sun's last ember,
The towering night resumes its reign.

Their attitude will teach the seer
How wise and needful is the fear
Of movement and of travailment;

For shadow-drunken wanderers bear
On all their ways the chastisement
Of having wished to wend elsewhere.


Black and white illustration of two owls sitting on a branch, looking at the readers, with a full moon over a mesa in the background.
Black and white illustration of two owls sitting on a branch, looking at the readers, with a full moon over a mesa in the background.

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

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.

Works published in 1941 could have had their copyright renewed in 1968 or 1969, i.e. 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, 1970.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 62 years or less. 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