Notas
Eons before Atlantean days in the time of the world's black dawn, / Strange were the kings and grim were 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 dies. / 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 cavern 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 chain 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 blind black face of stone a fearful unknown rune, / Leer 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 secret upon the shaft, oh, pallid sons of men: / "We that were lord 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.<<
I heard the harp of Alfred / As I went o'er the downs, / When thorn-trees stood at even / Like monks in dusky gowns; / I heard the music Guthrum heard / Beside the wasted towns; / When Alfred, like a peasant, / Came harping down the hill, / And the drunken Danes made merry / With the man they sought to kill, / And the Saxon king laughed in their beards / And bent them to his will. / I heard the harp of Alfred / As twilight waned to night; / I heard ghost armies tramping / As the dim stars flamed white; / And Guthrum walked at my left hand, / And Alfred at my right.<<
[3] Aquí concluye el fragmento de Howard. Lo que sigue es la parte de J. Pulver.<<
[4] (N. del T. Pinus contorta, tipo de pino con que los indios levantaban los tipis.<<
[5] (N. del T: Luna llena próxima al equinoccio de otoño).<<
[6] (N. del T: En español en el original).<<
They hanged John Farrel in the dawn amid the market-place; / At dusk came Adam Brand to him and spat upon his face. / "Ho, neighbors all," spake Adam Brand, "see ye John Parrel's fate! / "Tis proven here a hempen noose is stronger than man's hate! / "For heard ye not John Farrel's vow to be avenged on me / Come life or death? See how he hangs high on the gallows tree!" / Yet never a word the people spake, in fear and wild surprize— / For the grisly corpse raised up its head and stared with sightless eyes, / And with strange motions, slow and stiff, pointed at Adam Brand / And clambered down the gibbet tree, the noose within its hand. / With gaping mouth stood Adam Brand like a statue carved of stone, / Till the dead man laid a clammy hand hard on his shoulder-bone. / Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell; the red blood left his face / And he reeled away in a drunken run through the screaming market-place; / And close behind, the dead man came with face like a mummy's mask, / And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked with their unwanted task. / Men fled before the flying twain or shrank with bated breath, / And they saw on the face of Adam Brand the seal set there by death. / He reeled on buckling legs that failed, yet on and on he fled; / So through the shuddering market-place, the dying fled the dead. / At the riverside fell Adam Brand with a scream that rent the skies; / Across him fell John Farrel's corpse, nor ever the twain did rise. / There was no wound on Adam Brand but his brow was cold and damp, / For the fear of death had blown out his life as a witch blows out a lamp. / His lips writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend's on Satan's coals, / And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls. / Such was the fate of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate; / For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man's hate.<<