The Poetry of Robert E. Howard

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

   The Ghost Kings

The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,
From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;
There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.

A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;
Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;
There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.

The ghost kings are marching down the ages' dusty maze;
The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight's pallid haze,
Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.

The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,
While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund'rous herald sweeps;
They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps.

- Robert E. Howard

             The Song of Horsa's Galley

From the Baltic Sea our galleys sweep
to South and West and East,
We bring our bows from the Northern snows
that the great grey wolves may feast.

To the outmost roads of the plunging sea
Our dragon ships are hurled,
We have broken the chains of the Southern Danes
And now we break the world.

Out of the dark of the misty north
We come like shapes of gloam
To harry again the Southland men
And trample the arms of Rome.

The ravens circle above our prows
And our chant is the song of the sea.
They hear our oars by a thousand shores
And they know that the North is free.

-Robert E. Howard

             Thor's Son

     Serpent prow on the Afric coast,
          Doom on the Moorish town;
And this is the song the steersman sang
        As the dragonship swept down:

I followed Asgrimm Snorri's son around the world and half-way back,
And 'scaped the hate of Galdjerhrun who sank our ship off Skagerack.
I lent my sword to Hrothgar then; his eyes were ice, his heart was hard;
He fell with half his weapon-men to our own kin at Mikligard.

And then for many a weary moon I labored at the galley's oar
Where men grow maddened by the rune of row-locks clacking ever more.
But I survived the reeking rack, the toil, the whips that burned and gashed,
The spiteful Greeks that scarred my back and trembled even while they lashed.

They sold me on the Eastern block; in silver coins their price was paid;
They girt me with a chain and lock, I laughed and they were sore afraid.
I toiled among the olive trees until a night of hot desire
Blew me a breath of outer seas and filled my veins with curious fire.

Then I arose and broke my chain and laughed to know that I was free,
And battered out my master's brain and fled and gained the open sea.
Beneath a copper sun adrift, I shunned the proa and the dhow,
Until I saw a sail uplift, and saw and knew the dragon prow.

Oh, East of sands and sunlit gulf, your blood is thin, your gods are few;
You could not break the Northern wolf and now the wolf has turned on you.
The fires that light the coasts of Spain fling shadows on the Eastern strand.
Master, your slave has come again with torch and axe in his right hand!

-Robert E. Howard

    A Song of the ( Pictish ) Race                           

High on his throne sat Bran Mak Morn                                    
When the sun-god sank and the west was red;
He beckoned a girl with his drinking horn,
And, "Sing me a song of the race," he said.

Her eyes were as dark as the seas of night,
Her lips were as red as the setting sun,
As, a dusky rose in the fading light,
She let her fingers dreamily run

Over the golden-whispered strings,
Seeking the soul of her ancient lyre;
        Bran sate still on the throne of kings,
        Bronze face limned in the sunset's fire

"First of the race of men," she sang,
"Far from an unknown land we came,
From the rim of the world where mountains hang
And the seas burn red with the sunset flame."

"First and the last of the race are we,
        Gone is the old world's gilt and pride,
Mu is a myth of the western sea,
Through halls of Atlantis the white sharks glide."

An image of bronze, the king sate still,
Javelins of crimson shot the west,
She brushed the strings and a murmured thrill
Swept up the chords to the highest crest.

"Hear ye the tale that the ancients tell,
Promised of yore by the god of the moon,
Hurled on the shore a deep sea shell,
Carved on the surface a mystic rune:"

" 'As ye were first in the mystic past
Out of the fogs of the dim of Time,
So shall the men of your race be last
When the world shall crumble,' so ran the rhyme."

" 'A man of your race, on peaks that clash,
Shall gaze on the reeling world below;
To billowing smoke shall he see it crash,
A floating fog of the winds that blow.' "

" 'Star-dust falling for aye through space.
Whirling about in the winds that spin;
Ye that were first, be the last-most race,
For one of your men shall be the last of men.' "

Into the silence her voice trailed off,
Yet it echoed across the dusk,
Over the heather the night-wind soft
Bore the scent of the forest's musk.

Red lips lifted, and dark eyes dreamed,
Bats came wheeling on stealthy wings;
But the moon rose gold and the far stars gleamed,
And the king still sate on the throne of kings.

-Robert E. Howard