The Years Restored By Clark Ashton Smith

I said: Their thunders are forever dumb:
Time and the sun find not that former might,
Kings have not thrones and kingdoms in the Night –
Who sit with tarnished crowns and fingers numb,
Dropping the sceptre. Of the Past’s great sum,
Our hands reach but the symbols recondite,
The broken crypts accord the prying light
The gold long dim in Herculaneum.

I spoke: Nor saw, in realms with memory zoned,
The restoration of the mightier years –
Free from the dust of dead reality,
The perfect Dream in light eternal throned,
Nor how, with thunders uttered silently,
Death strikes loud echoes out of Life that hears.