The twilight for me.

The letters and lines on the pages

That sundered mine eyes and the flowers

[Pg 122]

Wax faint as the shadows of ages

That sunder their season and ours;

As the ghosts of the centuries that sever

A season of colourless time

From the days whose remembrance is ever,

As they were, sublime.

The season that bred and that cherished

The soul that I commune with yet,

Had it utterly withered and perished

To rise not again as it set,

Shame were it that Englishmen living

Should read as their forefathers read

The books of the praise and thanksgiving

Of Englishmen dead.

O light of the land that adored thee

And kindled thy soul with her breath,

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