wain

noun

1. a large open farm wagon or cart

[origin: before 12th century; Middle English wagon, chariot, from Old English waegn, wagon, akin to Middle Dutch wagen, wagon, Old English wegan to move]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Chapter 3
Beyond the creak of rat-gnawed beams
in squalid peasant huts:
Above the groan of ox-wain wheels
that ground the muddy ruts:
I heard the beat of distant drums
that call me night and day.
To roads where armored captains ride,
in steel and roses panoplied,
With banners flowing crimson-dyed—
over the world away!

[from “Drums in My Ears”; this is the complete poem as listed in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 27]

and

Grass and the rains and snow,
Trumpet and tribal drum;
Across my crests the people go,
Over my peaks the people come.
Girt with the pelts of lion and hare.
Plodding with oxen wains,
Climbing the steeps on a Spanish mare,
Soaring in aeroplanes.
Men with their hates and their ires,
Men with their loves and their lust
Still shall I reign when their spires
And their castles tumble to dust.

[from “The Mountains of California”; this is the complete poem as listed in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 293]

and

Nial of Ulster, welcome home!
What saw you on the road to Rome?—
Legions thronging the fertile plains?
Shouting hordes of the country folk
With the harvest heaped in their groaning wains?
Shepherds piping under the oak?
Laurel chaplet and purple cloak?
Smokes of the feasting coiled on high?
Meadows and fields of the rich, ripe green
Lazing under a cobalt sky?
Brown little villages sleeping between?
What saw you on the road to Rome?
“Crimson tracks in the blackened loam,
“Skeleton trees and a blasted plain,
“A heap of skulls and a child insane,
“Ruin and wreck and the reek of pain
“On the wrack of the road to Rome.”

[from “Shadows on the Road”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 520 and Always Comes Evening, p. 30]