zenpundit.com

4 Responses to “Ultima Thule ?”

1. Lexington Green Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

   Howard, thou shouldst be with us at this hour! 

   Howard’s poetry is so great.   This bit I know by heart:

   "When I was a soldier, the kettle-drums they beat
   The people scattered gold-dust before my horse’s feet
   Now I am a great king, the people hound my track
   With poison in my wine-cup and daggers at my back."

   And I have many times muttered this one to myself:

   "For I have fought the deathless ape that guards the doors of Doom."

   And who can forget the final (and I hope accurate) passage of his masterful "The Sowers of the Thunder":

   "Lord of the East!" his voice rang like a trumpet-call, "welcome
   to the fellowship of kings! To the glory and the witch-fire, the gold
   and the moonmist, the splendor and the death! Baibars, a king hails
   thee!"

   And he leaped and struck as a tiger leaps. Not Baibars’ stallion
   that screamed and reared, not his trained swordsmen, not his own
   quickness could have saved the memluk then. Death alone saved him–
   death that took the Gael in the midst of his leap. Red Cahal died in
   midair and it was a corpse that crashed against Baibars’ saddle–a
   falling sword in a dead hand, that, the momentum of the blow
   completing its arc, scarred Baibar’s forehead and split his eyeball.

   His warriors shouted and reined forward. Baibars slumped in the
   saddle, sick with agony, blood gushing from between the fingers that
   gripped his wound. As his chiefs cried out and sought to aid him, he
   lifted his head and saw, with his single, pain-dimmed eye, Red Cahal
   lying dead at his horse’s feet. A smile was on the Gael’s lips, and
   the gray sword lay in shards beside him, shattered, by some freak of
   chance, on the stones as it fell beside the wielder.

   "A hakim, in the name of Allah," groaned Baibars. "I am a dead
   man."

   "Nay, you are not dead, my lord," said one of his memluk chiefs.
   "It is the wound from the dead man’s sword and it is grievous enough,
   but bethink you: here has the host of the Franks ceased to be. The
   barons are all taken or slain and the Cross of the patriarch has
   fallen. Such of the Kharesmians as live are ready to serve you as
   their new lord–since Kizil Malik slew their khan. The Arabs have fled
   and Damascus lies helpless before you–and Jerusalem is ours! You will
   yet be sultan of Egypt."

   "I have conquered," answered Baibars, shaken for the first time in
   his wild life, "but I am half-blind–and of what avail to slay men of
   that breed? They will come again and again and again, riding to death
   like a feast because of the restlessness of their souls, through all
   the centuries. What though we prevail this little Now? They are a race
   unconquerable, and at last, in a year or a thousand years, they will
   trample Islam under their feet and ride again through the streets of
   Jerusalem."

   And over the red field of battle night fell shuddering.

2. zen Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 2:43 am

   Lex is bursting with literary teutonic zeal !

3. Lex Says:
   December 7th, 2007 at 3:47 am

   Any excuse to put a big slab of REH’s crazed and glorious prose in your comments, baby!

4. Barnabus Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 1:28 am

   Spain? Portugal?  the Vikings???