I am the thorn in the foot, I am the blur in the sight;
I am the worm at 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 of 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 wither with drouth, 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 grey fields of rice, I have learned from Mongol dead.
Where a bleak black mountainstands 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 hideen hells amd 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.
- Robert E. Howard
| Lyrics for to-die - Falca , 03.02.2000 00:50 MSK |
