“Deal of the Week” is an updated take on the horoscope column. Bad advice, worse poetry, every Monday.

I have tales and trophies to fill a palace, but I ask you not for glory. Sit and rest in this stable, I can offer you a foundation and lead you on another day. I come from an older kind of king, when heroes earned their riches and lived forever in song. The fat I yield still bears a price; all the meat at this feast was once an animal life. But I am armor and gold, a warrior and a stone, the cause, the shield and the prize in one.