Shadows and echoes haunt my dreams with dim and subtle pain,
With the faded fire of a lost desire, like a ghost on a moonlit plain.
In the pallid mist of death-like sleep she comes again to me:
I see the gleam of her golden hair and her eyes like the deep grey sea.
* * * * * * * * * *
We came from the North as the spume is blown when the blue tide billows down;
The kings of the South were overthrown in ruin of camp and town.
Shrine and temple we dashed to dust, and roared in the dead gods' ears;
We saw the fall of the kings of Gaul, and shattered the Belgae spears.
And South we rolled like a drifting cloud, like a wind that bends the grass,
But we smote in vain on the gates of Spain for our own kin held the Pass.
Then again we turned where the watch-fires burned to mark the lines of Rome,
And fire and tower and standard sank as ships that die in foam.
[from “An Echo From the Iron Harp”; to read the complete poem, see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard , p. 7;Night Images , p. 48 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems , p. 190]
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