At sunset, when the high sea span
About the rocks a web of foam,
I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
Come home. 
I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
Run from the weariness of War,
I heard him laughing as he ran
Across his unforgotten shore. 
The great cliff, gilded by the west,
Received him as an honoured guest. 
The green sea, shining in the bay,
Did drown his dreadful yesterday.

Come home, come home, you million ghosts,
The honest years shall make amends,
The sun and moon shall be your hosts,
The everlasting hills your friends. 
And some shall seek their mothers’ faces,
And some shall run to trysting-places,
And some to towns, and others yet
Shall find great forests in their debt. 
    Oh, I would siege the golden coasts
    Of space, and climb high heaven’s dome,
    So I might see those million ghosts
    Come home.

Next day all the Family, including Mr. Russell and excepting Cousin Gustus, came to breakfast with the intention of announcing that he or she must go up to London by the next train.  Mrs. Gustus, as ever, spoke first.

“My conscience is pricking me.  My work is calling me.  I must go up and see my old darlings in the Brown Borough.  There is, I see, a train at ten.”

“I was just going to say something quite different to the same effect,” said Kew.  “I want to go up and whisper some secrets into the ear of Cox.  I want to have my hair cut.  I want to buy this week’s Punch.  I want some brown bootlaces.  Life is empty for me unless I go up to town this morning.”

Mr. Russell, although he had tried the effect of all his excuses on his Hound while dressing, was silent.

Mrs. Gustus was never less than half an hour too early for trains.  This might account for the excellence of her general information.  She had spent a large portion of her life at railway stations, which are, I think, the centre of much wisdom.  She and Kew started for the station with mouths burnt by hurried coffee and toast-crumbs still unbrushed on their waistcoats, forty minutes before the train was due.  The protests of Kew could be heard almost as far as the station, which was reached by a walk of five minutes.

Cousin Gustus, Mr. Russell, and the convalescent Hound went to lie upon the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn.  They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus’s diary.  Nobody ever knew what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus’s diary, nobody ever wanted to know.  It gave him grounds for claiming literary tastes, and his literary tastes presumably made him marry a literary wife.  So the diary had a certain importance.

They spread out the rug in a little hollow, like a giant’s footprint in the downs, and sheep and various small flowers looked over their shoulders.