The Ride of Falume by Robert E. Howard (Poem)
“The Ride of Falume” was first published in the October 1927 issue of Weird Tales magazine. In 1957, Arkham House republished it in Always Comes Evening: The Collected Poems of Robert E. Howard. In the decades that followed, “The Ride of Falume” appeared in several more Robert E. Howard anthologies.
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 Ride of Falume
By Robert E. Howard
Falume of Spain rode forth amain when twilight’s crimson fell
To drink a toast with Bahram’s ghost in the scarlet land of Hell.
His rowels clashed as swift he dashed along the flaming skies;
The sunset rade at his bridle braid and the moon was in his eyes.
The waves were green with an eery sheen over the hills of Thule
And the ripples beat to his horses’ feet like a serpent in a pool.
On vampire wings the shadow things wheeled round and round his head,
Till he came at last to a kingdom vast in the Land of the Restless Dead.
They thronged about in a grisly rout, they caught at his silver rein;
“Avaunt, foul host! Tell Bahram’s ghost Falume has come to Spain!”
Then flame-arrayed rose Bahram’s shade: “What would ye have, Falume?”
“Ho, Bahram who on Earth I slew where Tagus’ waters boom,
Now though I shore your life of yore amid the burning West,
I ride to Hell to bid ye tell where I may ride to rest.
My beard is white and dim my sight and I would fain be gone.
Speak without guile: where lies the isle of mystic Avalon?”
“A league behind the western wind, a mile beyond the moon,
Where the dim seas roar on an unknown shore and the drifting stars lie strewn:
The lotus buds there scent the woods where the quiet rivers gleam,
And king and knight in the mystic light the ages drowse and dream.”
With sudden bound Falume wheeled round, he fled through the flying wrack
Till he came again to the land of Spain with the sunset at his back.
“No dreams for me, but living free, red wine and battle’s roar;
I breast the gales and I ride the trails until I ride no more.”
Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)