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The
Book of the Native
by
Charles G.D. Roberts
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Recessional
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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,
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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,—
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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
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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.
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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,
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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,
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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
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35 |
| Care
to laugh or weep. |
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