"To the Daemon: An Invocation" by Clark Ashton Smith

Tell me many tales, O benign maleficent daemon, but
tell me none that I have ever heard or have even
dreamt of otherwise than obscurely or infrequently.
Nay, tell me not of anything that lies between the
bourns of time or the limits of space; for I am a little
weary of all recorded years and chartered lands; and the
isles that are westward of Cathay, and the sunset realms
of Ind, are not remote enough to be made the abiding-
place of my conceptions; and Atlantis is over-new for
my thought to sojourn there, and Mu itself has gazed
upon the sun in aeons that are too recent

Tell me many tales, but let them be of things that are
past the lore of legend, and of which there are no myths
in our world or any world adjoining. Tell me, if you
will, of the years when the moon was young, with
siren-rippled seas and mountains that were zoned with
flowers from base to summit; tell me of the planets
gray with eld, of the worlds whereon no mortal astron-
omer has ever looked, and whose mystic heavens and
horizons have given pause to visionaries. Tell me of the
vaster blossoms within whose cradling chalices a woman
could sleep; of the seas of fire that beat on strands of
ever-during ice; of perfumes that can give eternal slum-
ber in a breath; of eyeless titans that dwell in Uranus,
and beings that wander in the green light of the twin
suns of azure and orange. Tell me tales of inconceivable
fear and unimaginable love, in orbs whereto our sun is
a nameless star, or unto which its rays have never
reached.

----

The picture used is the cover art for the Ballantine Books collection edited by Lin Carter.

The follow along: https://archive.org/stream/XiccarphClarkAshtonSmithLennySAMouse/Xiccarph%20-%20Clark%20Ashton%20Smith%20%28LennyS-aMouse%29_djvu.txt