The Nereid

by Clark Ashton Smith


	Her face the sinking stars desire:
	Unto her place the slow deeps bring
	Shadow of errant winds that wing
	O'er sterile gulfs of foam and fire.

	Her beauty is the light of pearls.
	AII stars and dreams and sunsets die
	To make the fluctuant glooms that lie
	Around her; and low noonlight swirls

	Down ocean's firmamental deep
	To weave for who glimmers there
	Elusive visions, vague and fair;
	And night is as a dreamless sleep:

	She has not known the night's unrest
	Nor the white curse of clearer day;
	The tremors of the tempest play
	Like slow delight about her breast.

	The berylline pallors of her face
	Illume the kingdom of the drowned.
	In her the love that none has found,
	The unflowering rapture, folded grace,

	Await some lover strayed and lone,
	Some god misled, who shall not come
	Though the decrescent seas lie dumb
	And sunken in their wells of stone.

	But nevermore of him, perchance,
	Her enigmatic musings are,
	Whose purpling tresses float afar
	In grottoes of the last romance.

	Serene, an immanence of fire
	She dwells for ever, ocean-thralled,
	Soul of the sea's vast emerald.
	Her face the sinking stars desire.