Cimmera, an illustrated poem

Excerpted from...
The Hyborian Rage,
by Roy Thomas

... Another project I've wanted to see Barry (Smith) tackle for some months has been the illustrating of a Robert E. Howard poem called Cimmeria, which deals of course with Conan's shadow-haunted homeland.

... Barry, whose work on the full-color Conan mag brought him and award from the industry's own Academy of Comic Book Arts, decided at the last moment that he'd like to see the whole thing reproduced from the original pencils instead of from the inked pages. So be it. I got my wish; why shouldn't he get his?

Cimmeria
by Robert E. Howard

I remember
The dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;
the grey clouds' leaden everlasting arch
the dusky stream that flowed without a sound,
and the lone winds that
whispered down the passes.

Vista on vista marching,
hills on hills, slope beyond slope,
each dark with sullen trees,
our gaunt land lay.

So when a man climbed up a rugged peak
and gazed
his shaded eye
saw but the endless vista
hill on hill
slope on slope
each hooded like itts brothers.

It was a gloomy land that seemed
to hold all winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
with bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds
and the dark woodlands brooding over all,
not even lighted by the rare dim sun which made squat shadows out of men;
they called it Cimmeria
land of Darkness and the Night.

It was so long ago and far away
I have forgot the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
and hunts and wars are a shadow.

I recall only the stillness of the sombre land;
the clouds that piledforever on the hills,
the dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.