by Clark Ashton Smith
_5. The Passing of Aphrodite_
In all the lands of Illarion, from mountain-valleys rimmed with
unmelting snow, to the great cliffs of sand whose reflex darkens a
sleepy, tepid sea, were lit as of old the green and amethyst fires
of summer. Spices were on the wind that mountaineers had met in the
high glaciers; and the eldest wood of cypress, frowning on a sky-clear
bay, was illumined by scarlet orchids.... But the heart of the poet
Phaniol was an urn of black jade overfraught by love with sodden ashes.
And because he wished to forget for a time the mockery of myrtles,
Phaniol walked alone in the waste bordering upon Illarion; in a place
that great fires had blackened long ago, and which knew not the pine
or the violet, the cypress or the myrtle. There, as the day grew old,
he came to an unsailed ocean, whose waters were dark and still under
the falling sun, and bore not the memorial voices of other seas. And
Phaniol paused, and lingered upon the ashen shore; and dreamt awhile of
that sea whose name is Oblivion.
Then, from beneath the westering sun, whose bleak light was prone on
his forehead, a barge appeared and swiftly drew to the land: albeit
there was no wind, and the oars hung idly on the foamless wave. And
Phaniol saw that the barge was wrought of ebony fretted with curious
anaglyphs, and carved with luxurious forms of gods and beasts, of
satyrs and goddesses and women; and the figurehead was a black Eros
with full unsmiling mouth and implacable sapphire eyes averted, as if
intent upon things not lightly to be named or revealed. Upon the deck
of the barge were two women, one pale as the northern moon, and the
other swart as equatorial midnight. But both were clad imperially, and
bore the mien of goddesses or of those who dwell near to the goddesses,
without word or gesture, they regarded Phaniol; and, marvelling, he
inquired, "What seek ye?"
Then, with one voice that was like the voice of hesperian airs among
palms at evening twilight in the Fortunate Isles, they answered, saying:
"We wait the goddess Aphrodite, who departs in weariness and sorrow
from Illarion, and from all the lands of this world of petty loves and
pettier mortalities. Thou, because thou art a poet, and hast known the
great sovereignty of love, shall behold her departure. But they, the
men of the court, the market-place and the temple, shall receive no
message nor sign of her going-forth, and will scarcely dream that she
is gone.... Now, O Phaniol, the time, the goddess and the going-forth
are at hand."
Even as they ceased, One came across the desert; and her coming was
a light on the far hills; and where she trod the lengthening shadows
shrunk, and the grey waste put on the purple asphodels and the deep
verdure it had worn when those queens were young, that now are a
darkening legend and a dust of mummia. Even to the shore she came and
stood before Phaniol, while the sunset greatened, filling sky and
sea with a flush as of new-blown blossoms, or the inmost rose of that
coiling shell which was consecrate to her in old time. Without robe or
circlet or garland, crowned and clad only with the sunset, fair with
the dreams of man but fairer yet than all dreams: thus she waited,
smiling tranquilly, who is life or death, despair or rapture, vision or
flesh, to gods and poets and galaxies unknowable. But, filled with a
wonder that was also love, or much more than love, the poet could find
no greeting.
"Farewell, O Phaniol," she said, and her voice was the sighing of
remote waters, the murmur of waters moon-withdrawn, forsaking not
without sorrow a proud island tall with palms. "Thou hast known me
and worshipped all thy days till now, but the hour of my departure is
come: I go, and when I am gone, thou shalt worship still and shalt
not know me. For the destinies are thus, and not forever to any man,
to any world or to any god, is it given to possess me wholly. Autumn
and spring will return when I am past, the one with yellow leaves, the
other with yellow violets; birds will haunt the renewing myrtles; and
many little loves will be thine. Not again to thee or to any man will
return the perfect vision and the perfect flesh of the goddess."
Ending thus, she stepped from that ashen strand to the dark prow of the
barge; and even as it had come, without wafture of wind or movement of
oar, the barge put out on a sea covered with the fallen, fading petals
of sunset. Quickly it vanished from view, while the desert lost those
ancient asphodels and the deep verdure it had worn again for a little.
Darkness, having conquered Illarion, came slow and furtive on the path
of Aphrodite; shadows mustered innumerably to the grey hills; and the
heart of the poet Phaniol was an urn of black jade overfraught by love
with sodden ashes.
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