Weird Tales/Volume 14/Issue 5/The Nightmare Tarn

The Nightmare Tarn by Clark Ashton Smith

I sat beside the moonless tarn alone,

In darkness where a mumbling air was blown—

A moulded air, insufferably fraught

With dust of plundered charnels: there was naught

In this my dream but darkness and the wind,

The blowing dust, the stagnant waters blind,

And sombre boughs of pine or cypress old

Wherefrom a rain of ashes dark and cold

At 'whiles fell on me, or was driven by

To feed the tongueless tarn; within the sky

The stars were like a failing phosphor wan

In gutted tombs from which the worms have gone.

But though the dust and ashes in one cloud

Blinded and stifled me as might a shroud,

And though the foul putrescent waters gave

Upon my face the fetors of the grave,

Though all was black corruption and despair,

I could not stir, like mandrake rooted there,

And with mine every breath I seemed to raise

The burden of some charnel of old days,

Where, tier on tier, the leaden coffins lie.

While sluggish black eternities went by

I waited; on the darkness of my dream

There fell nor lantern-flame nor lightning-gleam,

Nor gleam of moon or meteor; the wind

Withdrawn as in some sighing tomb, declined,

And all the dust was fallen; the waters drear

Lay still as blood of corpses. Loud and near

The cry of one who drowned in her despair

Came to me from the filthy tarn; the air

Shuddered thereat, and all my heart was grown

A place of fears the nether hell might own,

And prey to monstrous wings and beaks malign:

For, lo! the voice, O dearest love, was thine!

And I—I could not stir: the dreadful weight

Of tomb on ancient tomb accumulate

Lay on my limbs and stifled all my breath,

And when I strove to cry, the dust of death

Had filled my mouth, nor any whisper came

To answer thee, who called upon my name!