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THE SORCERER DEPARTS

Donald Sidney-Fryer




 

I pass… but in this lone and crumbling tower,

Builded against the burrowing seas of chaos,

My volumes and my philtres shall abide:

Poisons more dear than any mithridate,

And spells far sweeter than the speech of love…

Half-shapen dooms shall slumber in my vaults

And in my volumes cryptic runes that shall

Outblast the pestilence, outgnaw the worm

When loosed by alien wizards on strange years

Under the blackened moon and paling sun.


“The Sorcerer Departs”

Clark Ashton Smith

Fragment of unfinished poem (The Acolyte, Spring 1944).



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Framed