| |
| NOW along the solemn heights | |
| Fade the Autumn’s altar-lights; | |
| Down the great earth’s glimmering chancel | |
| Glide the days and nights. | |
| |
| Little kindred of the grass, | 5 |
| Like a shadow in a glass | |
| Falls the dark and falls the stillness; | |
| We must rise and pass. | |
| |
| We must rise and follow, wending | |
| Where the nights and days have ending,— | 10 |
| Pass in order pale and slow | |
| Unto sleep extending. | |
| |
| Little brothers of the clod. | |
| Soul of fire and seed of sod, | |
| We must fare into the silence | 15 |
| At the knees of God. | |
| |
| Little comrades of the sky, | |
| Wing to wing we wander by, | |
| Going, going, going, going, | |
| Softly as a sigh. | 20 |
| |
| Hark, the moving shapes confer, | |
| Globe of dew and gossamer, | |
| Fading and ephemeral spirits | |
| In the dusk astir. | |
| |
| Moth and blossom, blade and bee, | 25 |
| Worlds must go as well as we, | |
| In the long procession joining | |
| Mount and star and sea. | |
| |
| Toward the shadowy brink we climb | |
| Where the round year rolls sublime, | 30 |
| Rolls, and drops, and falls forever | |
| In the vast of time. | |
| |
| Like a plummet plunging deep | |
| Past the utmost reach of sleep, | |
| Till remembrance has no longer | 35 |
| Care to laugh or weep. | |
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