Page:The Sad Years.djvu/60

THE SWALLOW (Continued) Little brothers of the wind, children of the summer time, Lovers of the summer sky, swift you fly away!

I will dream the lone long hours, sick sad days, and weary nights; If I should grow well again I will follow too, See their distant happy homes, built with their strange Eastern art; I shall seek but smiling lands, skies forever blue.

And when swallows come again over all the changing sea, Back to where their empty nests still do cling and stay, I shall have a cabin, too, hidden 'neath its golden thatch, Snow-white on a mountain side, built of Irish clay.

I will leave the sparrows here, all the silly noisy birds, In and out and round the home all the live-long day, Chirping shrill and fussy ones, with their shallow sparrow minds, Chittering and chattering, yet having naught to say. [52]