Stranger to silence, listen, be comforted,
for sound and silence, daily interspaced,
meet here in sight.
Colour and sound are muted both by night:
bird after bird ceases from song and flight,
still, blue and deep,
distance outstretches to the sky, and shadows steep
in quiet the trees and grass, all houses dark with sleep.
See and be comforted.

Here all past summers lie. Here their increase
spreads wider branches. Though they only lease
a lifetime’s beauty,
time cannot touch the human memory
that flowers in you, lights for your living eye
known and unknown,
until you too, listening, have grown
one with the silence of all summers done
in the night’s peace.