O give me dark where riven from my sight is this - the land I have trodden since I began.

On this-THIS-spot I stood where long ago it perched atop a promontory crag washed by restless tides.

Now it stands awash it a sea of grasses having slept beneath the briefly victorious tide 'til-its cragginess worn away-it rose once again to light of day to plague my sight whose is the only such that might have seen it twice.

Here-HERE-stood I watching the infinite enigmatic network of wavelets wash the constant clay-what jest that-and here I stand where I may, in my regard, find an ocean of grass, and seas of grain in this low-LOW-place that once was high above the crashing surf.

I stand while the sun shelters behind hills whose names are too new to have made impression upon my soul and welcome the dark that hides the changes of the world from my sight.

I am betrayed e'en then howe'er by the circle of the firmament-- the constant and unchanging firmament (I laugh to hear it named as such) whose constellations are different to my eyes than in my youth.

Not by memory-O sharp and clear as noontide-betrayed am I, but by time itself who is the breath, the spirit, the quintessence-who IS change.

How sadder than a million wars is but a single rosebud which withers from the stress of my regard. For rosebud is but the latest of the deaths that I have seen who are so numberless as to pale beside them any war or act of genocide.

How withered is my soul.