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.
