“It was a sort of tune in a way, but more as if a devil or some rotten thing were laughing at you and going to get round at your back.” – William Hope Hodgson, “The Whistling Room”

Your kingly pride, untrammelled in its claims
Will not outlive the monster that it bred:
The tongueless song that whistles from the flames.

Your castle, your obsequious lords and dames
The war by which your slavish soldiers spread
Your kingly pride, untrammelled in its claims

Were but a dance of shadows, childish games
A witless pantomime whose follies fed
The tongueless song that whistles from the flames.

And when you sought to quiet the voice that blames
Your wickedness rebounded on your head.
Your kingly pride, untrammelled in its claims

Was made a jest that vengeful history shames
With blistered lips and mouth from which there bled
The tongueless song that whistles from the flames.

The deathless hate the tyrant never tames
Breathes here, and we inherit, in the stead
Of kingly pride untrammelled in its claims
The tongueless song that whistles from the flames.

[Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of journals, including Reach Poetry, Spectral Realms, Abyss and Apex, View from Atlantis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal  and others.]