I stand and look down on the village,
With its little simple street,
The summer winds come upward,
They stir the grass at my feet.
I watch the restless children,
They rush about at their play,
And my heart stirs up with a sadness;
So full of life are they.
Their mothers are busy with duties
That the household has in store,
And old men, dreaming of boyhood,
They sit in the sun at the door.
Their eyes are misty with thinking,
As the eyes of old men be,
When they hear in the hush of the twilight
The moan of the coming sea.
It is all so strange, but stranger
Life ebbing to come again;
For I stand in the old green churchyard
With my feet on the dust of men.