Explore "The after-Echo (of Skies and Seasons)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How long the echoes love to play / Around the shore of silence, as a wave / Retreating circles down the sand!
One after one, with sweet delay, / The mellow sounds that cliff and island gave, / Have lingered in the crescent bay, / Until, by lightest breezes fanned, / They float far off beyond the dying day / And leave it still as death.
But hark, -- / Another singing breath / Comes from the edge of dark; / A note as clear and slow / As falls from some enchanted bell, / Or spirit, passing from the world below, / That whispers back, Farewell.
So in the heart, / When, fading slowly down the past, / Fond memories depart, / And each that leaves it seems the last; / Long after all the rest are flown, / Returns a solitary tone, -- / The after-echo of departed years, -- / And touches all the soul to tears.
1871.