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Now, looming just over history’s horizon are three more imperial crises in Gaza, Taiwan and Ukraine that could cumulatively turn a slow imperial recessional into an all-too-rapid decline, if not collapse.

That was the time of Rudyard Kipling’s “long recessional” and A. E. Housman’s “land of lost content.”

Hidden Horns As a surprise to guests, the couple hired the band Hudson Horns to play for their recessional.

Her brothers, Sandy and James McIntryre, escorted her; Sandy, who would later lead a recessional while playing bagpipes, wore a kilt.

A good “old school singalong song,” he said his wife’s family introduced it to him, and the couple used it as the recessional song at their wedding.