Jump to content

Weird Tales/Volume 15/Issue 1/Ougabalys

From Wikisource
Ougabalys (1930)
by Clark Ashton Smith

From Weird Tales Volume 15, Issue 1

1437908Ougabalys1930Clark Ashton Smith

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 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.


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

Ougabalys by Clark Ashton Smith



In billow-lost Poseidonis

I was the god Ougabalys:

My three horns were of similor

Above my double diadem,

My one eye was a moon-wan gem

Found in a monstrous meteor.


Incredible far peoples came,

Called by the thunders of my fame,

And fleetly passed my terraced throne,

Where titan pards and lions stood,

As pours a never-lapsing flood

Before the wind of winter blown.



Before me, many a chorister

Made offering of alien myrrh,

And copper-bearded sailors brought,

From isles of ever-foaming seas,

Enormous lumps of ambergris

And corals intricately wrought.



Below my glooming architraves,

One brown eternal file of slaves

Came in from mines of chalcedon,

And camels from the long plateaux

Laid down their sard and peridoz,

Their incense and their cinnamon.



But now, within my sunken walls,

The slow blind ocean-serpent crawls,

And sea-worms are my ministers;

And wondering fishes pass me now,

Or press before mine eyeless brow

As once the thronging worshipers.