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 - The Passing Of Aphrodite.txt

Text File | 2000-09-05 | 5KB | 76 lines

The Passing of Aphrodite

by Clark Ashton Smith


In all the lands of Illarion, from mountain-valleys rimmed with unmelting snow,
to the great cliffs of sand whose reflex darkens a sleepy, tepid sea, were lit
as of old the green and amethyst fires of summer. Spices were on the wind that
mountaineers had met in the high glaciers; and the eldest wood of cypress,
frowning on a sky-clear bay, was illumined by scarlet orchids... But the heart
of the poet Phaniol was an urn of black jade overfraught by love with sodden
ashes. with unmelting snow, to the great cliffs of sard whose reflex And because
he wished to forget for a time the mockery of myrtles, Phaniol walked alone in
the waste bordering upon Illarion; in a place that great fires had blackened
long ago, and which knew not the pine or the violet, the cypress or the myrtle.
There, as the day grew old, he came to an unsailed ocean, whose waters were dark
and still under the falling sun, and bore not the memorial voices of other seas.
And Phaniol paused, and lingered upon the ashen shore; and dreamt awhile of that
sea whose name is Oblivion.

    Then, from beneath the westering sun, whose bleak light was prone on his
forehead, a barge appeared and swiftly drew to the land: albeit there was no
wind, and the oars hung idly on the foamless wave. And Phaniol saw that the
barge was wrought of ebony fretted with curious anaglyphs, and carved with
luxurious forms of gods and beasts, of satyrs and goddesses and women; and the
figurehead was a black Eros with full unsmiling mouth and implacable sapphire
eyes averted, as if intent upon things not lightly to be named or revealed. Upon
the deck of the barge were two women, one pale as the northern moon, and the
other swart as equatorial midnight. But both were clad imperially, and bore the
mien of goddesses or of those who dwell near to the goddesses. Without word or
gesture, they regarded Phaniol; and, marvelling, he inquired, 'What seek ye?'

    Then, with one voice that was like the voice of hesperian airs among
palms at evening twilight in the Fortunate Isles, they answered, saying:

    'We wait the goddess Aphrodite, who departs in weariness and sorrow from
Illarion, and from all the lands of this world of petty loves and pettier
mortalities. Thou, because thou art a poet, and hast known the great sovereignty
of love, shall behold her departure. But they, the men of the court, the
marketplace and the temple, shall receive no message nor sign of her
going-forth, and will scarcely dream that she is gone... Now, O Phaniol, the
time, the goddess and the going-forth are at hand.'

    Even as they ceased, One came across the desert; and her coming was a
light on the far hills; and where she trod the lengthening shadows shrunk, and
the grey waste put on the purple asphodels and the deep verdure it had worn when
those queens were young, that now are a darkening legend and a dust of mummia.
Even to the shore she came and stood before Phaniol, while the sunset greatened,
filling sky and sea with a flush as of new-blown blossoms, or the inmost rose of
that coiling shell which was consecrate to her in old time. Without robe or
circlet or garland, crowned and clad only with the sunset, fair with the dreams
of man but fairer yet than all dreams: thus she waited, smiling tranquilly, who
in life or death, despair or rapture, vision or flesh, to gods and poets and
galaxies unknowable. But, filled with a wonder that was also love, or much more
than love, the poet could find no greeting.

    'Farewell, O Phaniol,' she said, and her voice was the sighing of remote
waters, the murmur of waters moon-withdrawn, forsaking not without sorrow a
proud island tall with palms. 'Thou hast known me and worshipped all thy days
till now, but the hour of my departure is come: I go, and when I am gone, thou
shalt worship still and shalt not know me. For the destinies are thus, and not
forever to any man, to any world or to any god, is it given to possess me
wholly. Autumn and spring will return when I am past, the one with yellow
leaves, the other with yellow violets; birds will haunt the renewing myrtles;
and many little loves will be thine. Not again to thee or to any man will return
the perfect vision and the perfect flesh of the goddess.'

    Ending thus, she stepped from that ashen strand to the dark prow of the
barge; and even as it had come, without wafture of wind or movement of oar, the
barge put out on a sea covered with the fallen fading petals of sunset. Quickly
it vanished from view, while the desert lost those ancient asphodels and the
deep verdure it had worn again for a little. Darkness, having conquered
Illarion, came slow and furtive on the path of Aphrodite; shadows mustered
innumerably to the grey hills and the heart of the poet Phaniol was an urn of
black jade overfraught by love with sodden ashes.