Good-Night

The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down;

I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;

Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the

In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine prevails.

But the call of children in the unfamiliar

That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,

Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completesA magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a

Among men, beast, machine, bird, child, and the

That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.

The friendless town is friendly; homeless,

I am not lost;

Though I know none of these doors, and meet but strangers' eyes.

Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shallI see these homely streets, these church windows alight,

Not a man or woman or child among them all:

But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's good-night.