Favorite Poems: The Ghost Kings

In honor of the Conan action figure, a poem by his creator, Robert E. Howard, first published in Weird Tales in 1938. I first read it in an old issue of The Savage Sword of Conan.

The Ghost Kings

The ghost kings are marching: the midnight knows their tread,
From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead:
There are whisperings on the night-wind and the shuddering stars have fled.

A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;
Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;
There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.

The ghost kings are marching down the ages' dusty maze;
The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight's pallid haze,
Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.

The ghost kings are marching where the vague moon-vapor creeps,
While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund'rous herald sweeps;
They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps.