I am the thorn in the foot, I am the blur in the sight; I am the worm at the root, I am the thief in the night. I am the rat in the wall, the leper that leers at the gate; I am the ghost in the hall, herald of horror and hate. I am the rust on the corn, I am the smut on the wheat, Laughing man's labor to scorn, weaving a web for his feet. I am canker and mildew and blight, danger and death and decay; The rot of the rain by night, the blast of the sun by day. I warp and wither with drouth, I work in the swamp's foul yeast; I bring the black plague from the south and the leprosy in from the east. I rend from the hemlock boughs wine steeped in the petals of dooms; Where the fat black serpents drowse I gather the Upas blooms. I have plumbed the northern ice for a spell like Frozen lead; In lost grey fields of rice, I have learned from Mongol dead. Where a bleak black mountainstands I have looted grisly caves; I have digged in the desert sands to plunder terrible graves. Never the sun goes forth, never the moon glows red, But out of the south or the north, I come with the slavering dead. I come with hideous spells, black chants and ghastly tunes; I have looted the hideen hells amd plundered the lost black moons. There was never a king or priest to cheer me by word or look, There was never a man or beast in the blood-black ways I took. There were crimson gulfs unplumbed, there were black wings over a sea, There were pits where mad things drummed, and foaming blasphemy. There were vast ungodly tombs where slimy monsters dreamed; There were clouds like blood-drenched plumes where unborn demons screamed. There were ages dead to Time, and lands lost out of Space; There were adders in the slime, and a dim unholy Face. Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone, and the brain froze in my skull-- But I won through, I alone, and poured my chalice full Of horrors and dooms and spells, black buds and bitter roots-- From the hells beneath the hells, I bring you my deathly fruits.
Poem by Robert E. Howard
Used in the game "Adom" © Thomas Biskup, www.adom.de