The Frozen Waterfall

by Clark Ashton Smith


I returned on a winter day to the mountain stream, upon whose banks we roamed so
long ago when the rich azaleas leaned above it with their load of bloom, and
butterflies more white than their blossoms were on the wing. And I sought the
many-stranded waterfall that plunged from a mossy boulder beneath the flowering
branches, where once we loitered and loved each other well, and listened to the
splashing of the stream. And now the azaleas were bare, and their leaves had
long flown adown the torrent, and the foamy tresses of the fall had turned to
gleaming ice, and all hung in silence like downward-pointing blades that never
dropped.

	And seeing it, I thought of deterred desires and aspirations, of violent
longings checked and frozen in their course. And I found in the waterfall the
symbol I had sought; and finding it, I was doubly sad. . . . For was it not the
symbol of my soul?