Good night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours.
While sky and sea and land
And earth’s foundations stand
And heaven endures.

The speaker offers a valediction—“Good night”—that is more than a bedtime farewell: it reads as a final leave-taking, with “release” and “imperishable peace” suggesting death as rest or deliverance from struggle. The blessing is framed in solemn, almost liturgical language, as if conferring a benediction on the addressed person. The closing lines invoke the endurance of the cosmos (“sky and sea and land… heaven endures”) to measure the permanence of that peace: it is imagined as lasting as long as the created order itself. The effect is characteristic of Housman’s elegiac mode, where consolation is offered in austere, restrained terms rather than sentimental ones.