by Archibald MacLeish

    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 withered¹ grass

    And through the twilight² now the late

    Few travelers in the westward³ 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 gulls⁴

    And loom⁵ and slowly disappear

    The sails above the shadowy hulls⁶

    And Spain go under and the shore

    Of Africa the gilded⁷ 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 . . .