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