Thou art the Sun of other days. They shine by giving back the rays.

In these lines Keble addresses Christ as the enduring “Sun” whose light gives meaning to all past ages. The “other days” (earlier times, saints, and histories) are not luminous in themselves; they “shine” only by reflecting divine radiance back to the believer in the present. The image blends Christian typology (Christ as the light of the world) with a poetic account of tradition: the past is valuable not as mere nostalgia, but insofar as it refracts and returns spiritual truth. The couplet thus affirms continuity between present faith and inherited memory, while insisting that the ultimate source of illumination is God, not history.