Black Hounds of Death (29 page)

Weird Tales, March 1938

Out of the somber night the poets come,

A moment brief to fan their lambent flame;

Then, like the dimming whisper of a drum,

Fades back into the night from whence they came.

The gray fog, swirling cloak of cynic Time,

Meshes achievement in the ages’ gloom,

A moment’s mirth, a breath of lilting rime,

And then—the gray of old oblivion’s womb.

Weaver of melodies all golden-spun

The singer sings his song—and passes on.

The poets strum his lyre—then is one

With gray-hued dusk and rose of fading dawn.

A moment’s laughter on the winds of Time,

A moment’s ripple on Time’s silent sea,

A golden riffle in the river’s slime,

And then—the silence of Eternity.

Gray dust and ash where leaped the mystic fire,

Mingled with air and wind the once-red flame;

Breeze-born the tune, but now forgot the lyre—

Remains?—the musty thing that men call Fame.

Half-curious eyes that scan the yellowed page,

All heedless of the makers of the feast—

Why, Pierrot might have been a musty sage,

Francois Villon a stoled and sour priest.

Who penned this lyric? Who this sonnet? Whence

The soul of fire that snared these stars in song?

Who knows? Who cares? A vast indifference

Is all the answer of the marching throng.

Weird Tales, April 1938

At birth a witch laid on me monstrous spells,

And I have trod strange highroads all my days,
Turning my feet to gray, unholy ways.

I grope for stems of broken asphodels;
High on the rims of bare, fiend-haunted fells,

I follow cloven tracks that lie ablaze;

And ghosts have led me through the moonlight’s haze
To talk with demons in the granite hells.

Seas crash upon dragon-guarded shores,

Bursting in crimson moons of burning spray,

And iron castles ope to me their doors,

And serpent-women lure with harp and lay.
The misty waves shake now to phantom oars—

Seek not for me; I sail to meet the day.