The Poetry Corner

The Unrevealed

By Clark Ashton Smith

How dense the glooms of Death, impervious To aught of old memorial light! How strait The sunless road, suspended, separate, That leads to later birth! Untremulous With any secret morn of stars, to us The Past is closed as with division great Of planet-girdling seas - unknown its gate, Beyond the mouths of shadows cavernous. Oh! may it be that Death in kindness strips The soul of memory's raiment, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on mountain peaks a glance behind Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall?