Good-Night
THE skylarks are far behind that sang over thedown;I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of thetownIn vain: the noise of man, beast, and machineprevails.
But the call of children in the unfamiliar streetsThat echo with a familiar twilight echoing,Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completesA magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king
Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and theghostThat in the echo lives and with the echo dies.The friendless town is friendly; homeless, Inot lost;Though I know none of these doors, and meet butstrangers' eyes.
Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shallI see these homely streets, these church windowsalight,Not a man or woman or child among them all:But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's goodnight.
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