The Ghost Kings

                           

 The Ghost Kings by Robert E. Howard

 

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 mountain head;
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.

I first read these verses in an issue of The Savage Sword of Conan when I was in high school. While I never thought it was great poetry (it lacks a satisfying ending, for one thing) I always felt there was something there, if only an evocation of a mood. Howard was reaching, perhaps for some parity or just a comparison with other weird poets like Clark Ashton Smith. There are some days in fall (and the end of this day is one of them) when The Ghost Kings come treading through my mind, and I think he just maybe achieves good poetry when the mood is right.