"Smith, Clark Ashton - The Mithridate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

The Mithridate

by Clark Ashton Smith

[From "Poems in Prose" Clark Ashton Smith, 1964: Arkham House Publishers.]


The world has a thousand poisons, thin or potent, honey-like or nauseous, quick
or languid, corrosive and deadly, or captious and deceptive and narcotic. There
are poisons bright as an amber wine, or rich as blood or rubies, or clear and
hueless and innocent- seeming as the water of untroubled lakes, or dark and
turbid as the ooze of the nether sea. There are poisons that slay the soul, that
slay the heart or the mind or the body, and others that never slay, but only
torture and benumb.

Against all these, your love is the sovereign mithridate; and indeed, I
have never found any other.

But when you love me not, or love me ill, I am powerless against them;
and even love itself becomes an immedicable poison- a poison that is doubly
lethal because it kills so slowly, or does not kill at all.