When I was but a youngster still,
a druid newly bound,
I saw a siren in the wood
whose match I've never found.
I met her by the Inner Sea
while hunting late one night:
an aslaran from Seren fair
with fur of moonlit white.

I offered her a shank of lamb,
to keep her there with me.
She took the meal and paid in song,
and danced beneath the trees.
She had a wildness in her eyes,
a forest in her gaze,
and when she sang, she sang a flame
that set my heart ablaze.

She sang of Serenwilde at dawn
with gentle, feline charms...
Before I knew it she had found
her way into my arms.
Forgotten was my waiting pride,
my duty to my guild;
for as I stared into her eyes
I thought myself fulfilled.

'Come with me,' she whispered soft,
'we'll live and love as one,
our souls entwined, our hearts afire,
we'll burn bright as the sun.
'We'll leave this dullest of the worlds,
and ne'er return again,
our home will be the starlit woods
of the ethereal plane.'

Remembering my Hartstone pledge,
I hesitated then.
Could I so easily betray
my guildmates and my friends?
'What silence, this?' she asked, dismayed.
'Desirest thou not me?'
'I do, my dear,' I cried, 'but truth,
our love can never be.

'I cannot leave so much undone:
my path leads me back home.
I have no gypsy heart inside,
and was not born to roam.'
She tried once more to sway my mind.
'Boy,' purred she, 'I'd well love thee,
from ear to tail and back again,
if only thou wouldst fly with me.'

Now Shanth himself would be hard press'd
to combat such allure,
but somehow I withstood it, and
made clear and firm demur.
At this rebuff, she turned her face--
so sorrowful and dear!--
and vanishéd into the night
as quick as she'd appeared.

Though all this happened long ago,
and death now beckons me,
I cannot help but think of her,
what was, and might have been.
But when the moon is clear and bright,
she comes on midnight's wings,
and as I sleep she kisses me
and draws me close and sings:

'O come, my love, we'll chase the night,
we'll bend it to our will.
Then none at all, in earth or sky,
may bid our hearts be still.'