The Eternal Gleam

This is another poem unpublished in the lifetime of Clark Ashton Smith (CAS), so I'll begin with the text itself:


The tides of sunlight outward swim
          Where night, a dusky moon beguiles.
          The star of evening wanly smiles
O'er seas of twilight vast and dim.

With brightening vestal lucency
          Thou crownest, lonely vesper star,
          Yon line inexorable and far
That e'er withholds the day from me.

Thou hast the gleam that flamed divine
          In billows of the sunset light
          That leapt athwart the strands of night
And with its pure and lucent sign

Unto my soul thou beckonest:
          My spirit yearns to burst its chains
          And follow where the daylight wanes,
On wings of strong, divine unrest.

If I might gain the sunset's beam
          O'ertake it in the distant flight
          And bathe within its waves of light
A moment might I hold the gleam!


These quatrains describe a bold notion, and the repetition of the word "divine" captures my attention, especially with the second use of the word in these lines from the fourth stanza: 


My spirit yearns to burst its chains
          And follow where the daylight wanes,
On wings of strong, divine unrest.


The narrator's longing for a cosmic adventure is not without an understanding of the risks of such a journey, with the phrase "divine unrest" especially powerful in its implication of chaos on a grand scale.