This single verse of twelve lines consists of three four-line rhymes. The texture of the verse is mood-setting towards contemplation, with a soft threat of the drowse, as if the author seeks to lull the reader to sleep on a warm afternoon so that he might awake to some startling event. This reader suspects that San Jacinto was composed as a poetic overture to a short adventure which begins and ends in singular solitude. In this I am reminded of Howard’s poetic lead in to The Pool of the Black One.
There is something weirdly magnetic about this darkly pastoral verse.
“Long ago on San Jacinto…”
Under the God of Things