The Riders of Babylon by Robert E. Howard (Poem)

“The Riders of Babylon” was first published in the January 1928 issue of Weird Tales. In 1957, Arkham house republished it in Always Comes Evening: The Collected Poems of Robert E. Howard. “The Riders of Babylon” has since been included in several additional anthologies including Always Come Evening (1977) and Halloween at the Dog and Duck (2009).

 

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 Riders of Babylon

By Robert E. Howard

The riders of Babylon clatter forth
Like the hawk-winged scourgers of Azrael
To the meadow-lands of the South and North
And the strong-walled cities of Israel.
They harry the men of the caravans,
They bring rare plunder across the sands
To deck the throne of the great god Baal.
But Babylon’s king is a broken shell
And Babylon’s queen is a sprite from Hell;
And men shall say, “Here Babylon fell,”
Ere Time has forgot the tale.
The riders of Babylon come and go
From Gaza’s halls to the shores of Tyre;
They shake the world from the lands of snow
To the deserts, red in the sunset’s fire;
Their horses swim in a sea of gore
And the tribes of the earth bow down before;
They have chained the seas where the Cretans sail.
But Babylon’s sun shall set in blood;
Her towers shall sink in a crimson flood;
And men shall say, “Here Babylon stood,”
Ere Time forgot the tale.

 

Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)