The Song of a Mad Minstrel

Always Comes Evening ~ Desert Dawn written by Robert Ervin Howard

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I am the thorn in the foot,
   I am the blur in the sight;
I am the worm in the root,
   I am the thief in the night.
I am the rat in the wall,
   the leper that leers at the gate;
I am the ghost in the hall,
   herald or horror and hate.

I am the rust on the corn,
   I am the smut on the wheat,
Laughing man's labor to scorn,
   weaving a web for his feet.
I am canker and mildew and blight,
   danger and death and decay;
The rot of the rain by night
   the blast of the sun by day.

I warp and whither with drought,
   I work in the swamp's foul yeast;
I bring the black plague from the south
   and the leprosy in from the east.
I rend from the hemlock boughs
   wine steeped in the petals of dooms;
Where the fat black serpents drowse
   I gather the Upas blooms.

I have plumbed the northern ice
   for a spell like frozen lead;
In lost gray fields of rice,
   I have learned from Mongol dead.
Where a bleak black mountain stands
   I have looted grisly caves;
I have digged in the desert sands
   to plunder terrible graves.

Never the sun goes forth,
   never the moon glows red,
But out of the south or the north,
   I come with the slavering dead.
I come with hideous spells,
   black chants and ghastly tunes;
I have looted the hidden hells
   and plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest
   to cheer me by word or look,
There was never a man or beast
   in the blood-black ways I took.
There were crimson gulfs unplumbed,
   there were black wings over a sea;
There were pits where mad things drummed,
   and foaming blasphemy.

There were vast ungodly tombs
   where slimy monsters dreamed;
There were clouds like blood-drenched plumes
   where unborn demons screamed.
There were ages dead to Time,
   and lands lost out of Space;
There were adders in the slime,
   and a dim unholy Face.

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone,
   and the brain froze in my skull―
But I won through, I alone,
   and poured my chalice full
Of horrors and dooms and spells,
   black buds and bitter roots―
From the hells beneath the hells,
   I bring you my deathly fruits.

Works by this author are in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 89 years or less. cs | de | en | eo | es | fr | he | pl | ru | zh

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