Cimmeria

I remember

The dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills,
The grey clouds' leaden everlasting arch;
The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,
And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.

Vista on vista marching, hills on hills,
Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,
Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed up
A rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eye
Saw but the endless vista - hill on hill,
Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far away
I have forgot the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like dreams,
And hunts and wars are shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

Oh, soul of mine, born out of shadowed hills,
To clouds and winds and ghosts that shun the sun,
How many deaths shall serve to break at last
This heritage which wraps me in the grey
Apparel of ghosts? I search my heart and find
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.


Cimmeria, by R.E.Howard, 1932.

Posted without permission, because I really like this poem, and Howard's works in general. And he's dead, and I don't make any profit from this blog, and I want you to see it, and I think its fair use, and IP laws are strangling culture and literature to death and making us all poorer for it. And I have a sense of ennui concerning the new Conan movie. And I haven't made up any new monsters for you lately.

Old things and rare my treasures are.

Survivors beyond memory
Old things and rare my treasures are.
Times folded gates, fast closed to me,
These lonely sentinels unbar.

Years do not weary them, nor mar
Their power of ancient wizardry;
Things old and rare my treasures are
Enchantment seeking memory.

Scarred wreck of long forgotten war
Austere, unchanging, silently
Dream, and the drums faint and far
Arouse the blazoned years for me.

Enchantment wakens memory;
Old things and rare my treasures are.

A poem by Ewart Oakeshott.



I wrote previously of Ewart Oakeshott, the rightly respected scholar of the sword. The above poem refers to his own collection of historic swords, and the sense of connection with the far away and long ago they brought to him.

Some might deride this as nostalgia or fantasy, but the past is never past for me.

AD&D is my old treasure, but when I draw it from the sheath,its still as sharp as the day it was forged.

Up the Old Guard!