The Verse pf Robert E Howard

[El Borak]

The opening of his play Songs of Bastards, from a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. March 1929

Oh, the years they pass
like a bleak jackass,
chasing a flock of fillies;
and I wish to Hell
I could sleep with Nell
on a couch of roses and lilies.

The seagulls fly
in a dreaming sky
and the hoptoad’s smile is bitter;
and the turtle dove
sings a song of love
to the snake and the tiger’s litter.

In the lure of the woods
the bullfrog broods
on the songs of Sappho’s lovers,
and the rattlesnake
o’er the dreaming brake,
flitters and flies and hovers.

Oh, Nell, young Nell,
if I were to tell
of the thoughts that rise within me,
oh, Nell, fair Nell,
if I should tell—
your husband would come and skin me.

[El Borak]

One of the influences on Howard was a western writer named H. H. Knibbs.

The Valley That God Forgot
H. H. Knibbs

Out in the desert spaces, edged by a hazy blue,
Davison sought the faces of the long-lost friends he knew:
They were there, in the distance dreaming
Their dreams that were worn and old;
They were there, to his frenzied seeming,
Still burrowing down for gold.

Davison’s face was leather; his mouth was a swollen blot,
His mind was a floating feather, in The Valley That God Forgot;
Wild as a dog gone loco,
Or sullen or meek, by turns,
He mumbled a “Poco! Poco!”
And whispered of pools and ferns.

Gold! Why his, for the finding! But water was never found,
Save in deep caverns winding miles through the underground:
Cool, far, shadowy places
Edged by the mirrored trees,
When—Davison saw the faces!
And fear let loose his knees.

There was Shorty who owed him money, and Billing who bossed the crowd;
And Steve whom the boys called “Sunny,” and Collins who talked so loud:
Miguel with the handsome daughter,
And the rustler, Ed McCray;
Five—and they begged for water,
And offered him gold, in pay.

Gold? It was never cheaper. And Davison shook his head:
“The price of a drink is steeper out here than in town,” he said.
He laughed as they mouthed and muttered
Through lips that were cracked and dried;
The pulse in his ear-drum fluttered:
“I’m through with the game!” he cried.

“I’m through!” And he knelt and fumbled the cap of his dry canteen
Then, rising, he swayed and stumbled into a black ravine:
His ghostly comrades followed,
For Davison’s end was near,
And a shallow grave they hollowed,
When up from it, cool and clear

Bubbled the water—hidden a pick-stroke beneath the sand;
Davison, phantom-ridden, scooped with a shaking hand . . .
Davison swears they made it,
The Well where we drank to-day.
Davison’s game? He played it
And won—so the town-folk say:

Called it, The Morning-Glory—near those abandoned stamps,
And Davison’s crazy story was told in a hundred camps:
Time and the times have tamed it,
His yarn—and this desert spot,
But I’m strong for the man who named it,
The Valley That God Forgot.

[El Borak]

Here's the quote from REH that tips us off:

"For poetry, I like Robert W. Service, Kipling, John Masefield, James Elroy Flecker, Vansittart, Sidney Lanier, Edgar Allen Poe, the Benets Stephen Vincent better than William Rose , Walter de la Mare, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Francis Ledwedge, Omar Khayyam, Joe Moncure March, Nathalia Crane, Henry Herbert Knibbs, Lord Dunsany, G.K. Chesterton, Bret Harte, Oscar Wilde, Longfellow, Tennyson, Swinburne, Viereck, Alfred Noyes, and, again, yourself." -- REH to HPL, December 1932

I believe that REH may have been apprised of Knibbs by Burroughs' Return of the Mucker (REH owned it), where Knibbs' poetry played a notable role:

www.erbzine.com/mag9/0950.html

Here's a review of a Knibbs novel:

buddiesinthesaddle.blogspot.com/2011/01/h-h-knibbs-overland-red-1914.html

[El Borak]

A poem Howard wrote about his birthday:

I Praise My Nativity

Oh, evil the day that I was born, like a tale that a witch has told;
I came to birth on a bitter morn, when the sky was dim and cold.
The god that girds the loins of Fate and sends the nighttime rain,
He diced my game on an iron plate with dice carved out of pain.
"This for the shadow of hope," laughed he, as the numbers glinted up,
"This for a spell and this for hell, and this for the bitter cup."
A Shadow came out of the gloom of night and covered me with his cowl
That carried the curse of The Truer Sight and the blindness of the owl.
Oh, evil the day that I was born, triply I curse the day,
And I would to God I had died that morn and passed like the ocean spray.

~REH~

[El Borak]

Victory

Red fires in the North are glowing bright,
And tom-tom thump through the whispering night.
Aye, the jungle knows to the least leaf-blade
That the men of Mafu are back from the raid:

Back with the heads of a hundred braves,
Back with a hundred female slaves.
Aye, the men for the loot are throwing lots,
While the women bend to the cooking pots.

And the night wind blows,
And the jungle knows,
That the men of Mafu
Have smote their foes.

Chiefs and councillors haste to glut
At the feast in Mafu’s palace-hut.
They stride through the door and a bead of red
Unheeded falls on each feathered head.

And scarce an eye turns toward the ghastly thing
That once was the head of Goru’s king:
He that died at the height of pride,
Hung high, feet to a cross-beam tied.

And the echoes thrum
To the roaring drum
That boasts of the foemen
Mafu’s overcome.

And fire-light gleams as lithe forms prance;
Mafu’s warriors spin in a blood-crazed dance.
The great fire chuckles in crimson blast
As the naked, leaping forms lurch past.

Like shadow-things in the shifting light,
They leap in a ghastly voodoo rite,
And the firelight gleams on white teeth bare
In fierce-eyed faces, amid flying hair.

And the dancers whirl
Through the shadowy swirl,
Mocking the shrieks
Of a captive girl.

Far to the East ’neath a baobab tree,
By a sullen river that runs to the sea,
Smolders a heap of ruins laid
In the midst of a ruined palisade.

Veiled by a grisly, yellow smoke,
No sound is heard save the vulture’s croak
And the jackals’ snarl at the cindered bones—
Unheeding, the sullen river drones.

And the river flows,
And the night wind blows,
Sifting the ashes
Of Mafu’s foes.

~ REH ~