Skip to content
Linespedia

The Medusa Of The Skies

Topics: classic

Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb,          The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head,          Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead         From pallid skies more death-like than the gloom.         Now fall her beams till slope and plain assume          The whiteness of a land whence life is fled;          And shadows that a sepulcher might shed         Move livid as the stealthy hands of doom.         O'er rigid hills and valleys locked and mute,          A pallor steals as of a world made still         When Death, that erst had crept, stands absolute -             An earth now frozen fast by power of eyes         That malefice and purposed silence fill,             The gaze of that Medusa of the skies.

AI analysis available. Enable JavaScript to interact.

About this line

"Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb,..."

Exploring the themes of classic, Clark Ashton Smith delivers a powerful performance in "The Medusa Of The Skies"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

Classified Tags

Related lines

"Now as the twilight's doubtful interval          Closes with night's accomplished certainty,          A wizard wind goes crying eerily;"

"One tone is mute within the starry singing,         The unison fulfilled, complete before;         One chord within the music sounds no more"

"Above its domes the gulfs accumulate          To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed;          But here the buried waters take no"

"The cherry-snows are falling now;          Down from the blossom-clouded sky         Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough,          In widely"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Continue Reading

"Now as the twilight's doubtful interval          C..."

Weekly Poetic Insight

Join our literary Sanctuary

Get the most inspiring lines, poetic analysis, and secret shayaris delivered to your inbox every Sunday.