‘A Gibbet Grim’
The Fear That Follows by Robert E. Howard
© 2016 James LaFond
MAY/20/16
The Fear That Follows, which remained unpublished until 1970, is poem of three 8 line verses, which begins with a murderer’s confession:
“The smile of a child was on her lips—Oh, smile of a last long rest.
My arm went up and my arm went down and the dagger pierced her breast,”
Horrified by his action, the murderer flees across the countryside to escape the scene of his crime and ends up standing beneath a grim-faced moon that is shedding bloody tears on him. At the breach of insanity he turns back into the world of men:
“…to the only trail that was left upon the earth for me,
The trail that leads to the hangman’s cell and the grip of the gallows tree.”
Howard’s work on this piece has the sting of spiritual vengeance about it that pervades some of his best works, such as the Tower of the Elephant, and Queen of the Black Coast, which sketch a cosmos that punishes abominable behavior from beyond the grave and across the ages.
sorcerer!
under the god of things
book of nightmares
taboo you
on combat
beasts of aryas
dark, distant futures
solo boxing
son of a lesser god
winter of a fighting life
honor among men
masculine axis
into leviathan’s maw
sons of aryas
the fighting edge
uncle satan
orphan nation
blue eyed daughter of zeus
the first boxers
advent america
when you're food
the lesser angels of our nature
wife—
predation
thriving in bad places
fanatic
broken dance
the gods of boxing
songs of aryas
the sunset saga complete
logic of force
on the overton railroad
fate
z-pill forever
logic of steel
all-power-fighting
triumph
the combat space
song of the secret gardener
your trojan whorse
cracker-boy
hate
time & cosmos
let the world fend for itself
ranger?
america the brutal
night city
within leviathan’s craw
fiction anthology one
barbarism versus civilization
by the wine dark sea
the greatest lie ever sold
the greatest boxer
menthol rampage
the year the world took the z-pill