Shapes of Clay

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.