The Days

by Clark Ashton Smith


O Fairest, O dearest, to what shall I liken thy days? Methinks are as precious
gems, as pearls and amethysts, which, from a broken string, some idle princess,
sitting on her barge of ivory and gold, lets fall one in to the bottomless blue
and placid sea. Mine, alas, are as teardrops, falling incessantly into the gulf
so deep and dark that no sound, no echo, nor any gleam or reflection, returns
from its unknowable and sinister abyss.