The Harp of Alfred by Robert E. Howard (Poem)

“The Harp of Alfred” was first published in the September 1928 issue of Weird Tales. It was forgotten until 1947, when it was one of several Robert E. Howard poems included in Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabrewhere, an anthology containing the work of several other noted authors including Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.

 

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 Harp of Alfred

By Robert E. Howard

I heard the harp of Alfred
As I went o’er the downs,
When thorn-trees stood at even
Like monks in dusky gowns;
I heard the music Guthrum heard
Beside the wasted towns:

When Alfred, like a peasant,
Came harping down the hill,
And the drunken danes made merry
With the man they sought to kill,
And the Saxon king laughed in their beards
And bent them to his will.

I heard the harp of Alfred
As the twilight waned to night;
I heard ghost armies tramping
As the dim stars flamed white;
And Guthrum walked at my left hand,
And Alfred at my right.

 

Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)