"Song of the Necromancer" by Clark Ashton Smith

1 year ago
3

empery: empire

mantic: relating to divination or prophecy

Lar: the Lares were guardian deities in the ancient Roman religion

amaranthine: there are many possible definitions here, starting with: undying. Otherwise, it could be of or relating to any of the following: 1) a genus of coarse annual herbs with clusters of small green, dark pink, red, or purplish flowers; 2) a flower than never fades; or 3) a pinkish or rosy red

"Shall tread the amaranthine lawn" doesn't make it obvious which meaning is the one intended, but any of them could work. I guess take whichever one tickles your fancy the most.

And there's that stars/wars rhyme Smith used in Amithaine. I don't understand why he's so obsessed with forcing that rhyme that isn't.

The picture used is "Necromancer" by DikkiDIrt, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/528/song-of-the-necromancer

Loading comments...