Some musings after nearing four score years

‘Break, break, break…Lord Tennyson

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

"Home No More Home to Me,... "Robert Louis Stevenson

Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.

The true word of welcome was spoken in the door --

Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,

Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,

Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.

Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;

Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.

Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,

Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.

Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,

The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

Requiem - Robert Louis Stevenson. 1850–1894

UNDER the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:            

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.