Clark Ashton Smith

PALE fire of snow had lit the dusk for me:

Astray with mind half-consciously intent,

I had not thought the wood so imminent.

Those lofty trees upstanding wearily,

Darker than sleep, more mute with mystery

Than far-off death, where questing dreams are spent

With stars and winds, appeared they as I went

Therein, and paused in old expectancy.

Pale fire of snow had lit the dusk for me;

But the black stillness held where once the wind

Had parted boughs in music, that the gleam

Of stars might enter. All was strangely blind,

More dull than midnight ’neath the middle sea;

Filled with the silence of a perished dream