THE SAD YEARS
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.
