The Flood (To All Evangelists)

Rise in your haughty pulpits;
Preach with a godly ire!
You turn my blood to venom;
You turn my soul to fire.
Lords of the fading darkness,
Nursing a crumbling race,
This is the bitter gauntlet
I hurl in your face:
That the day of your rule is over,
And the tribes begin to rise,
As a sleeping giant, stirring,
Opens his drowsy eyes.
Under the ice are gathering
Floods that were born in hell,
And the slow, great waves are coiling,
With the power to rebel.
You dance with a broken sceptre,
You squeak on a barren throne,
And your temples rise and topple
And crumble to shattered stone.
The day of light is coming,
But you would bide within the dark;
You seek to drag us backward-
Men of darkness, mark!
The day shall come of our fury
When we hurl all chains aside,
And the flood will beat you under
With the fury of its tide.

-Robert E. howard