lesh of men.
Greedy and fleet
Do we fly from far,
Like the birds that meet
For the feast of war,
Till the air of fight
With our wings be stirred,
As it whirrs from the flight
Of the ravening bird.
Like the flakes that drift
On the snow-wind's breath,
Many and swift,
And winged for death--
Greedy and fleet,
Do we speed from far,
Like the birds that meet
On the bridge of war.
Fleet as ghosts that wail,
When the dart strikes true,
Do the swift shafts hail,
Till they drink warm dew.
Keen and low
Do the grey shafts sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string.

This was the message of Death, and this was the first sound that had
broken the stillness of his home.

At the welcome of this music which spoke to his heart--this music he had
heard so many a time--the Wanderer knew that there was war at hand.
He knew that the wings of his arrows should be swift to fly, and their
beaks of bronze were whetted to drink the blood of men. He put out his
hand and took the bow, and tried the string, and it answered shrill as
the song of the swallow.

Then at length, when he heard the bowstring twang to his touch, the
fountains of his sorrow were unsealed; tears came like soft rains on a
frozen land, and the Wanderer wept.

When he had his fill of weeping, he rose, for hunger drove him--hunger
that is of all things the most shameless, being stronger far than
sorrow, or love, or any other desire. The Wanderer found his way through
the narrow door behind the dais, and stumbling now and again over fallen
fragments of the home which he himself had built, he went to the inner,
secret storehouse. Even _he_ could scarcely find the door, for saplings
of trees had grown up about it; yet he found it at last. Within the holy
well the water was yet babbling and shining in the moonlight over the
silver sands; and here, too, there was store of mouldering grain, for
the house had been abundantly rich when the great plague fell upon the
people while he was far away. So he found food to satisfy his hunger,
after a sort, and next he gathered together out of his treasure-chest
the beautiful golden armour of unhappy Paris, son of Priam, the false
love of fair Helen. These arms had been taken at the sack of Troy, and
had lain long in the treasury of Menelaus in Sparta; but on a day he h