Thursday, October 29, 2026

Till the Oft-Rerisen Bells from Young Atlantis Call

 Cycles
by Clark Ashton Smith 

The sorcerer departs . . . and his high tower is drowned
Slowly by low flat communal seas that level all . . .
While crowding centuries retreat, return and fall
Into the cyclic gulf that girds the cosmos round,
Widening, deepening ever outward without bound . . .
Till the oft-rerisen bells from young Atlantis call;
And again the wizard-mortised tower upbuilds its wall
Above a rebeginning cycle, turret-crowned. 

New-born, the mage resummons stronger spells, and spirits
With dazzling darkness clad about, and fierier flame
Renewed by aeon-curtained slumber. All the powers
Of genii and Solomon the sage inherits;
And there, to blaze with blinding glory the bored hours,
He calls upon Shem-hamphorash, the nameless Name.

In the epilogue to Zothique: The Final Cycle, Ronald S. Hilger notes that this was written just a few months before Smith's death in 1961, and is his last poem.