Jump to content

A Lady's Chamber

From Wikisource
A Lady's Chamber (1929)
by Robert Ervin Howard

First published in American Poet, April 1929.
Published under the pen name Patrick Howard.

551850A Lady's Chamber1929Robert Ervin Howard

Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope
Scent the gloom where the dead men grope.

Silver, ruby-eyed leopards crouch
At the carven ends of the silken couch.

A purple mist of a perfume rare
Billows and sways, and weights the air.

The pale blue domes of the ceiling rise
Gemmed and carved like opium skies—
Golden serpents with crystal eyes.

Why should men grow strange and cold,
Like a marble heart in a breast of gold?

Their eyes are ice and they look strange tales,
They carve the mist with their long jade nails.

Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope
Scent the gloom where dead men grope;
They have stabbed their hearts with a golden sword
And hanged themselves with a silken rope.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) before 1964, and copyright was not renewed.

Works published in 1929 could have had their copyright renewed in 1956 or 1957, i.e. between January 1st of the 27th year after publication or registration and December 31st of the 28th year. As this work's copyright was not renewed, it entered the public domain on January 1st, 1958.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1936, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 87 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

It is imperative that contributors ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse