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Acolyte, v. 1, issue 4, Summer 1943
Page 3
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PROSE PASTELS by Clark Ashton Smith ([[underline]]Prose Pastels[[end underline]] are reprinted from [[underline]]The Fantasy Fan[[end underline]] through the courtesy of Clark Ashton Smith and Charles D. Horning. They were originally published in 1934.) -oOo- 1. CHINOISERIE *** Ling Yang, the poet, sits all day in his willow-hidden hut by the river side, and dreams of the lady Moy. Spring and the swallows have returned from the timeless isles of amaranth, further than the flight of sails in the unknown south; the silver buds of the willow are breaking into gold; and delicate jade-green reeds have begun to push their way among the brown and yellow rushes of yesteryear. But Ling Yang is heedless of the brightening azure, the light that lengthens; and he has no eye for the northward flight of the waterfowl, and the passing of the last clouds that melt and vanish in the flames of an amber sunset. For him, there is no season save that moon of waning summer in which he first met the Lady Moy. But a sorrow deeper than the sorrow of autumn abides in his heart; for the heart of Moy is colder to him than high mountain snows above a tropic valley; and all the songs he has made for her, the songs of the flute and the songs of the lute, have found no favor in her hearing. ******* Leagues away, in her pavilion of scarlet lacquer and ebony, the Lady Moy reclines on a couch piled with sapphire-colored silks. All day, through the gathering gold of the willow-foliage, she watches the placid lake, on whose surface the pale-green lily pads have begun to widen. Beside her, in a turquoise-studded binding, there lie the verses of poet Ling Yung, who lived six centuries ago, and who sang in all his songs the praise of the Lady Loy, who disdained him. Moy has no need to peruse them any longer, for they live in her memory even as upon the written page. And, sighing, she dreams ever of the great poet Ling Yung, and of the melancholy romance that was shown toward him by the Lady Loy. ----ooOoo---- 2. THE MIRROR IN THE HALL OF EBONY *** From the nethermost profund of slumber, from a gulf beyond is the sun and stars that illume the Lethean shoals and the vague lands of somnolent visions, I floated on a black uprippling tide to the dark threshold of a dream. And in this dream I stood at the end of a long hall that was ceiled and floored and walled with sable ebony, and was lit with a light that fell not from the sun or moon nor from any lamp. The hall was without doors or windows, and the further extreme an oval mirror was framed in the wall. And standing there, I remembered nothing of all that had been; and the other dreams of sleep, and the dream of birth and of everything thereafter, were alike forgotten. And forgotten too was the name I had found among men and the other names whereby the daughters of dream had known me; and memory was no older than my coming to that hall. But I wondered not, nor was I troubled thereby, and naught was strange to me: for the tide that had borne me to this threshold was the die of Lethe. Anon, though I knew not why, my feet were drawn adown the hall, and I approached the oval mirror. And in the mirror I beheld the hag- -- 3 --
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PROSE PASTELS by Clark Ashton Smith ([[underline]]Prose Pastels[[end underline]] are reprinted from [[underline]]The Fantasy Fan[[end underline]] through the courtesy of Clark Ashton Smith and Charles D. Horning. They were originally published in 1934.) -oOo- 1. CHINOISERIE *** Ling Yang, the poet, sits all day in his willow-hidden hut by the river side, and dreams of the lady Moy. Spring and the swallows have returned from the timeless isles of amaranth, further than the flight of sails in the unknown south; the silver buds of the willow are breaking into gold; and delicate jade-green reeds have begun to push their way among the brown and yellow rushes of yesteryear. But Ling Yang is heedless of the brightening azure, the light that lengthens; and he has no eye for the northward flight of the waterfowl, and the passing of the last clouds that melt and vanish in the flames of an amber sunset. For him, there is no season save that moon of waning summer in which he first met the Lady Moy. But a sorrow deeper than the sorrow of autumn abides in his heart; for the heart of Moy is colder to him than high mountain snows above a tropic valley; and all the songs he has made for her, the songs of the flute and the songs of the lute, have found no favor in her hearing. ******* Leagues away, in her pavilion of scarlet lacquer and ebony, the Lady Moy reclines on a couch piled with sapphire-colored silks. All day, through the gathering gold of the willow-foliage, she watches the placid lake, on whose surface the pale-green lily pads have begun to widen. Beside her, in a turquoise-studded binding, there lie the verses of poet Ling Yung, who lived six centuries ago, and who sang in all his songs the praise of the Lady Loy, who disdained him. Moy has no need to peruse them any longer, for they live in her memory even as upon the written page. And, sighing, she dreams ever of the great poet Ling Yung, and of the melancholy romance that was shown toward him by the Lady Loy. ----ooOoo---- 2. THE MIRROR IN THE HALL OF EBONY *** From the nethermost profund of slumber, from a gulf beyond is the sun and stars that illume the Lethean shoals and the vague lands of somnolent visions, I floated on a black uprippling tide to the dark threshold of a dream. And in this dream I stood at the end of a long hall that was ceiled and floored and walled with sable ebony, and was lit with a light that fell not from the sun or moon nor from any lamp. The hall was without doors or windows, and the further extreme an oval mirror was framed in the wall. And standing there, I remembered nothing of all that had been; and the other dreams of sleep, and the dream of birth and of everything thereafter, were alike forgotten. And forgotten too was the name I had found among men and the other names whereby the daughters of dream had known me; and memory was no older than my coming to that hall. But I wondered not, nor was I troubled thereby, and naught was strange to me: for the tide that had borne me to this threshold was the die of Lethe. Anon, though I knew not why, my feet were drawn adown the hall, and I approached the oval mirror. And in the mirror I beheld the hag- -- 3 --
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