The other night, whilst shambling about the Interwebz, I beheld an image which stirred nameless dread in my soul. It was a black-and-white piece by the late, great Richard Corben. Digging deeper, I surmised it was a chapter heading from the nearly-forgotten codex of darksome verse, Night Images. Check it out:

In bygone days, I had seen some Corben artwork from Night Images but never this one.

For those who didn't bother to click the link above, Night Images was published in 1976 by the shadowy Morning Star Press--which could almost be the name of the publishing arm of a sorcerous cult. It was a costly tome with a scanty print run. I have never seen one in the wild. Night Images boasted a great cover by none other than Frank Frazetta, which painting had previously graced the front of Thongor in the City of Magicians, ironically enough.

Anyway, that Corben image--including the "Songs of Death" text--got me digging into the Howard Works entry on Night Images. Essentially, the project was a high-end sequel to Always Comes Evening, the seminal volume of Robert E. Howard poetry published by Arkham House.

The mysterious editors of Morning Star Press saw fit to divide their trove of Howardian poems into several broad categories under titles such as "Of Dreams and Visions", "Songs of War and Warriors" and, indeed, "Songs of Death". When the estimable REH Foundation Press published its collection of Howardian verse two decades ago, they followed in the tenebrous footsteps of Night Images.

When I took a look at the "Songs of Death" chapter, I was struck by how few of the poems therein were truly centered on Death and deathly things. The poems in the chapter are excellent, don't get me wrong. Perhaps the stash the editors had to draw from simply didn't have many poems within those parameters. Glenn Lord reprinted Always Comes Evening by way of Underwood-Miller just one year later, meaning all of those verses were tied up.

So, tonight--in a fit of hubris--I've decided to add a few more Howardian paeans to mortality and mysteries beyond the grave to Night Images’ table of contents. REH has more Songs of Death to sing on All Hallows’ Eve. Enjoy.

“Moon Mockery”
Published in Weird Tales, Vol. 13, No. 4 (April 1929)

I walked in Tara’s Wood one summer night,
And saw, amid the still, star-haunted skies,
A slender moon in silver mist arise,
And hover on the hill as if in fright.

Burning, I seized her veil and held her tight:
An instant all her glow was in my eyes;
Then she was gone, swift as a white bird flies,
And I went down the hill in opal light.

And soon I was aware, as down I came,
That all was strange and new on every side;
Strange people went about me to and fro,

And when I spoke with trembling mine own name
They turned away, but one man said: “He died
In Tara Wood, a hundred years ago.”

Since I have no more illustrations from Corben which are suitable—as much as I wish I did—I am resorting to drawings by Jeffrey Jones from the same period.

“The Moor Ghost”
Published in Weird Tales, Vol. 14, No. 3 (September 1929).

They haled him to the crossroads
As day was at its close;
They hung him to the gallows
And left him for the crows.

His hands in life were bloody,
His ghost will not be still;
He haunts the naked moorlands
About the gibbet hill.

And oft a lonely traveler
Is found upon the fen
Whose dead eyes hold a horror
Beyond the world of men.

The villagers then whisper,
With accents grim and dour:
“This man has met at midnight
The phantom of the moor.”

“One Who Comes at Eventide”
Published in Modern American Poetry, 1933.

I think when I am old a furtive shape
Will sit beside me at my fireless hearth,
Dabbled with blood from stumps of severed wrists,
And flecked with blackened bits of mouldy earth.

My blood ran fire when the deed was done;
Now it runs colder than the moon that shone
On shattered fields where dead men lay in heaps
Who could not hear a ravished daughter’s moan.

(Dim through the bloody dawn on bitter winds
The throbbing of the distant guns was brought
When I reeled like a drunkard from the hut
That hid the horror my red hands had wrought.)

So now I fire my veins with stinging wine,
And hoard my youth as misers hug their gold,
Because I know what shape will come and sit
Beside my crumbling hearth—when I am old.