“The Melancholy Pool” by Clark Ashton Smith (in English)

Marked by the priesthood of the Night's misrule,

The shadow-cowled, imprecatory trees —

Cypress that guarded woodland secrecies

And graves that waited for the delaying ghoul,

Nathless I neared the melancholy pool,

Chief care of all, but closlier sentinelled

By those whose roots were deepest in dead eld.

Where the thwart-woven boughs were wet and cool

As with a mist of poison, I drew near

To mark the tired stars peer dimly down

Through riven branches from the height of space,

And shudder in those waters with quick fear,

Where in black deeps the pale moon seemed to drown —

A haggard girl, with dead, despairing face.

“Solution” by Clark Ashton Smith (in English)

The ghostly Ere that walks the fen,

Tonight thine only light shall be;

On lethal ways thy soul shall pass,

And prove the stealthy, coiled morass

With mocking mists for company.

On roads thou goest not again,

To shores where thou hast never gone,

Fare onward, though the shuddering queach

And serpent-rippled waters reach

Like seepage-pools of Acheron

Beside thee; and the twisted reeds,

Close-raddled as a witch's net,

Enwind thy knees, and cling and clutch

Like wreathing adders; though the touch

Of the blind air be dank and wet

As from a wounded Thing that bleeds

In cloud and darkness overhead—

Fare onward, where thy dreams of yore

In splendor drape the fetid shore

And pestilential waters dead.

And though the toads' irrision rise

Like grinding of Satanic racks,

And spectral willows, gaunt and grey,

Gibber along thy shrouded way,

Where vipers lie with livid backs

And watch thee with their sulphurous eyes—

Fare onward, till thy feet shall slip

Deep in the sudden pool ordained,

And all the noisome draught be drained

That turns to Lethe on the lip.