WINMX Assorted Textfiles/Ebooks.tar/Text - Compilations - The Library - Volume 09 - R to Z - 354 fiction ebooks (PDF, HTML, RTF, DOC, TXT, ZIP).zip/Smith, Clark Ashton - Chinoiserie.txt

Text File | 2000-09-05 | 2KB | 31 lines

Chinoiserie

by Clark Ashton Smith


Ling Yang, the poet, sits all day in his hut among the willows by the
river-side, and dreams of the Lady Moy. Spring and the swallows have returned
from the timeless isles of myrrh and amaranth, further than the flight of sails
in the unknown south; the silver buds of the willow are breaking into gold; and
reeds of venal jade have begun to push their way among the brown and yellow
rushes of yesteryear. But Ling Yang is heedless of the brightening azure, the
light that lengthens: and he has no eye for the northward flight of the
waterfowl, and the passing of the last clouds, that melt and vanish in the
flames of an amber sunset. For him, there is no season save the moon of waning
summer in which he first met the Lady Moy. But a sorrow deeper than the sorrow
of autumn abides in his heart; for the heart of Moy is colder to him than the
snows of great mountains above a tropic valley: and all the songs he has made
for her, the songs of the flute and the songs of the lute, have found no favour
in her hearing.

    Leagues away, in her pavilion of scarlet lacquer and ebony, the Lady Moy
reclines on a couch of sapphire-coloured silk. All day, through the gathering
gold of the willow-foliage, she watches the placid lake, on whose surface the
pale green lilly-pads have begun to widen, Beside her, in a turquoise-studded
binding, there lie the verses of the poet Ling Yung, who lived six centuries
ago, and who sang in all his songs the praise of the Lady Loy, who disdained
him. Moy has no need to peruse them any longer, for they live in her memory even
as upon the written page. And, sighing, she dreams ever of the great poet, Ling
Yung, and of the melancholy romance that inspired his songs, and wonders
enviously at the disdain of the Lady Loy.