'In the Dreamig Past'
But the Hills Were Ancient Then by Robert E. Howard
© 2017 James LaFond
AUG/9/17
Reading from pages 9-10 of A Word from the Outer Dark
These six verses of four lines each take the dreamer from a reverie in the present, through the "mist of yesterdays" backward, first depicting Anglos wrestling with the untamed land and then earlier, Spaniards, whose nation's aspirations were defied by the lowly mesquite.
But the Hills Were Ancient Then paints a shadowy word picture of a landscape resisting, testing and shaping the human invader.
Each of the six verses is thematic:
1. life, maintaining cyclic patterns
2. time, and its dislocating effect on the human mind
3. change, in the form of man
4. races, waxing and waning
5. elemental effects on the human form
6. fate and the resistance of the elemental forms to man's will
In many ways But the Hills Were Ancient Then, serves as a thematic guide to Howard's prose. It bears reading before many a Howard hero tale.
the lesser angels of our nature
songs of aryas
hate
thriving in bad places
the fighting edge
when you're food
dark, distant futures
fanatic
menthol rampage
all-power-fighting
on the overton railroad
the gods of boxing
within leviathan’s craw
logic of force
logic of steel
the year the world took the z-pill
son of a lesser god
into leviathan’s maw
the greatest lie ever sold
orphan nation
fiction anthology one
taboo you
ranger?
broken dance
sorcerer!
cracker-boy
z-pill forever
uncle satan
time & cosmos
under the god of things
honor among men
night city
the greatest boxer
wife—
by the wine dark sea
your trojan whorse
america the brutal
sons of aryas
let the world fend for itself
winter of a fighting life
barbarism versus civilization
book of nightmares
song of the secret gardener
solo boxing
the sunset saga complete
triumph
fate
on combat
the first boxers
the combat space
beasts of aryas
predation
masculine axis
blue eyed daughter of zeus
advent america