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Rebel souls from the falling dark...

From Wikisource

Sent in a letter to Howard's friend Tevis Clyde Smith, November 1928. First published in The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1, 2007. Variation on a ballad stanza, with two stanzas compressed into one.

592866Untitled1928Robert Ervin Howard

Rebel souls from the falling dark,
   What are the crowns you gain?
The quenching night of a dungeon stark
   And the brine of the rusty chain.
The taunt and the tang of the bitter blood,
   And the grim of the grisly bars,
The friar's chant and the hangman's hood—
   And a star amid the stars!