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…”