The Sun and the Sepulchre

by Clark Ashton Smith

June 22. [c.1914-15]


I saw the declivous latter sunlight fall and glitter upon the sepulchre of one
whose immomentous name was holden awhile from Oblivion by the deeply-trenched
remembrance of marble. And, touched ere-long by the richer fires of the
horizon-cloven and ensanguined orb, those cold, marmoreal pallors blushed with a
fervent blazonry of roseal-tinted splendour.

	Even thus, even thus, and not otherwise, O Sun, shall thine after-fire
transglorify the zoning snows and glaciers of a planet that has become the
eviternal tomb of its temporal race. And thus thy latter setting, vast with the
marvel of strange light and imagineless flame, shall inform those bleak and
spheral pallors with a fervant blazonry of roseal-tinted splendour.