Explore "Constancy" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.