The Best Horror Stories of by Robert E Howard

Author:Robert E Howard [Howard, Robert E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-17T19:27:06.885000+00:00

The Symbol

Eons before Atlantean days in the time of the world's black dawn, Strange were the kings and grim the deeds that the pallid moon looked on.

When the great black cities split the stars and strange prows broke the tide, And smoke went up from ghastly shrines where writhing victims died.

Black magic raised its serpent head, and all things foul and banned, Till an angry God hurled up the sea against the shuddering land.

And the grisly kings they read their doom in the wind and the rising brine, And they set a pillar on a hill for a symbol and a sign.

Black shrine and hall and carven wall sank to eternal sleep, And dawn looked down on a silent world and the blue unbroken deep.

Now men go forth in their daily ways and they reck not of the feel Of the veil that crushed, so long ago, the world beneath its heel.

But deep in the seaweed-haunted halls in the green unlighted deep, Inhuman kings await the day that shall break their chains of sleep.

And far in a grim untrodden land on a jungle-girded hill,

A pillar stands like a sign of Fate, in subtle warning still.

Carved in its blind black face of stone a fearful unknown rune Leers in the glare of the tropic sun and the cold of the leprous moon.

And it shall stand for a symbol mute that men are weak and blind, Till Hell roars up from the black abyss and horror swoops behind.

For this is the screed upon the shaft, oh, pallid sons of men:

"We that were lords of all the earth, shall rise and rule again."

And dark is the doom of the tribes of earth, that hour wild and red, When the ages give their secrets up and the sea gives up its dead.

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