Weird Tales/Volume 24/Issue 3/Sable Revery

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1205525Sable Revery1934Robert William Nelson

Sable Revery


(Written to music)


By ROBERT NELSON

Black roses sprout across the sky,
Pipes sing insensate 'neath the sea,
The clamant heads of madmen fly
And shatter with a dark outcry,
As tones transpose to deeper dye
And leaves whirl wild with jubilee
Through the mad organist's rambling brain;
In the disordered sepulcher
A lady's dead eyes strive to stir,
She dares to laugh, but all in vain;
Three-fingered hands paint a far frieze
With the black blood of vanquished devils,
Who sway and slay the music-breeze
In their daft and dying revels.


Now ebon fluids 'gin to flow
And drip with waxen candle-men;
Black disks of stone are trundling low;
From the organ's bosom fuming slow,
Fouler and sadder perfumes blow
To drown the bourns of demon ken;
Skulls flown from swarthy corpses kiss
And feed upon the organist's soul,
Which ne'er doth cease to toll and roll
Bell-like within this dusk abyss;
Fell plants and flowers writhe in wombs
Of blighted worlds remote from morn,
And musty myrrh exhales from tombs
Whirling in utmost stars forlorn.


Swart suns on sounding waters swell
The turgid notes to direr din,
And murky spirits soar from hell
To flap their cerements palpable
In the wild player's face, and tell
Jet jewels into his mouth, and spin
Mad gossamers amid his hair;
Swift raven locks entwine his throat,
His eyes no longer glare and gloat;
As from a tower high in air,
The console wakes a weirder fear;
His flaming, fitful fingers chill;
One tear he weeps, a dead man's tear:
The sable revery is still.

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 1934 would have had to renew their copyright in either 1961 or 1962, i.e. at least 27 years after they were first published/registered but not later than 31 December in the 28th year. As this work's copyright was not renewed, it entered the public domain on 1 January 1963.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 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.

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