The Tavern by Robert E. Howard (Poem)

“The Tavern” didn’t appear in print until more than three decades after Robert E. Howard’s death, when it was published in Singers in the Shadows, a poetry collection published by Donald M. Grant. “The Tavern” has since  been included in a few additional anthologies but is not one of Howard’s more popular poems.

 

About Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American writer of pulp fiction. Often considered to be the man who began the sword and sorcery subgenre, Howard was the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Howard began writing fiction when he was just nine years old. In December 1922, aged 16, his work began paying off when The Tattler (Brownwood High School newspaper) printed two of his stories: “‘Golden Hope Christmas” and “West is West”. Then, in 1924, after years of having his stories rejected by Weird Tales, he made his first sale to the magazine with a caveman story called “Spear and Fang”. This marked the start of Howard’s career as a pulp fiction writer and Weird Tales subsequently became one of his main outlets for weird fiction.

 

The Tavern

By Robert E. Howard

There stands, close by a dim, wolf-haunted wood,
A tavern like a monster, brooding thing.
About its sullen gables no birds sing.
Oft a lone traveller, when the moon is blood,
Lights from his horse in quest of sleep and meal.
His footfalls fade within and sound no more;
He comes not forth; but from a secret door
Bearing a grisly burden, shadows steal.

By day, ’neath trees whose silent, green leaves glisten,
The tavern crouches, hating day and light.
A lurking vampire, terrible and lean;
Sometimes behind its windows may be seen
Vague leprous faces, haggard, fungus-white,
That peer and start and ever seem to listen.

 

Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)