"The Isle of Saturn" by Clark Ashton Smith

1 year ago
9

In one of these (islands) the barbarians
feign that Saturn is held prisoner by Zeus.
-Plutarch

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Clio and Euterpe are Muses. Clio is the muse of history (or lyre playing, depending on who you ask), and Euterpe is the muse of music (or lyric poetry)

sempiternal: eternal

xanthic: yellowish

spindrift: sea spray, especially spray blown from waves during a gale

croft: an enclosed field used for tillage or pasture, typically attached to a house and worked by the occupier. (Historically, it would be a small rented farm, especially one in Scotland, comprising a plot of arable land attached to a house and with a right of pasturage held in common with other such farms.)

calamus: also called sweet flag, sway or muskrat root, myrtle root, sweet myrtle, among many common names, is a species of flowering plant with psychoactive chemicals, that grows on the edges of waterways, bodies of water, and wetlands

plait: to braid hair

The picture used is "Zeus punishment" by JuanSan, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)

To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/574/the-isle-of-saturn

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