Constancy

Dull were the days and sober,
The mountains were brown and bare,
For the season was sad October
And a dirge was in the air.

The mated starlings flew over
To the isles of the southern sea.
She wept for her warrior lover—
Wept and exclaimed: “Ah, me!

“Long years have I mourned my darling
In his battle-bed at rest;
And it’s O, to be a starling,
With a mate to share my nest!”

The angels pitied her sorrow,
Restoring her warrior’s life;
And he came to her arms on the morrow
To claim her and take her to wife.

An aged lover—a portly,
Bald lover, a trifle too stiff,
With manners that would have been courtly,
And would have been graceful, if—

If the angels had only restored him
Without the additional years
That had passed since the enemy bored him
To death with their long, sharp spears.

As it was, he bored her, and she rambled
Away with her father’s young groom,
And the old lover smiled as he ambled
Contentedly back to the tomb.