A Book of Hymns for the Nativity, III And now, the day is on the wane, The sun slopes down its golden stair; And shadows stretch across the plain, And hide the trembling wild-flowers there. These Nature songs we sing aloud, They rise to grace the evening air, Our voices echo soft and proud, In twilight’s tender, sweet compare.

In every leaf a whisper glows, In every brook a melody flows. In vale and hill, in stream and glade, Each breath we take, an act of aid. Yet in this beauty, we can trace, The fingerprints of nature’s grace.

• John Milton