What is the purpose of the statement below?
"The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have
vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things
that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed
and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the
witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll."