And here face down beneath the sun
 And here upon earth’s noonward height
 To feel the always coming on
 The always rising of the night:
 To feel creep up the curving east
 The earthy chill of dusk and slow
 Upon those under lands the vast
 And ever climbing shadow grow
 And strange at Ecbatan the trees
 Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
 The flooding dark about their knees
 The mountains over Persia change
 And now at Kermanshah the gate
 Dark empty and the withered grass
 And through the twilight now the late
 Few travelers in the westward pass
 And Baghdad darken and the bridge
 Across the silent river gone
 And through Arabia the edge
 Of evening widen and steal on
 And deepen on Palmyra’s street
 The wheel rut in the ruined stone
 And Lebanon fade out and Crete
 High through the clouds and overblown
 And over Sicily the air
 Still flashing with the landward gulls
 And loom and slowly disappear
 The sails above the shadowy hulls
 And Spain go under and the shore
 Of Africa the gilded sand
 And evening vanish and no more
 The low pale light across that land
 Nor now the long light on the sea:
 And here face downward in the sun
 To feel how swift how secretly
 The shadow of the night comes on ...




















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