| NOW very quietly, and rather mournfully, | |
| In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, | |
| And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him | |
| Keep but in memory their borrowed fires. | |
| |
| And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, | 5 |
| From that faint exquisite celestial strand, | |
| And turn and see again the only dwelling-place | |
| In this wide wilderness of darkening land. | |
| |
| The house, that house, O now what change has come to it. | |
| Its crude red-brick façade, its roof of slate; | 10 |
| What imperceptible swift hand has given it | |
| A new, a wonderful, a queenly state? | |
| |
| No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, | |
| So inharmonious, so ill-arranged; | |
| That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; | 15 |
| No, it is not that any line has changed. | |
| |
| Only that loneliness is now accentuate | |
| And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, | |
| This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, | |
| And all man's energies seem very brave. | 20 |
| |
| And this mean edifice, which some dull architect | |
| Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, | |
| Takes on the quality of that magnificent | |
| Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind. | |
| |
| Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be, | 25 |
| Yet imperturbable that house will rest, | |
| Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny, | |
| Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast. | |
| |
| Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac | |
| May howl their menaces, and hail descend: | 30 |
| Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly, | |
| Not even scornfully, and wait the end. | |
| |
| And all a universe of nameless messengers | |
| From unknown distances may whisper fear, | |
| And it will imitate immortal permanence, | 35 |
| And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear. | |
| |
| It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too, | |
| When there is none to watch, no alien eyes | |
| To watch its ugliness assume a majesty | |
| From this great solitude of evening skies. | 40 |
| |
| So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around, | |
| While life remains to it prepared to outface | |
| Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries | |
| May hide and wait for it in time and space. | |
