Return to England.

In 1871, at sixty years of age, Domett returned to England to spend the rest of his days, and his first task was to arrange for the publication of his long poem. It appeared in 1872, in one volume. A second edition, in two volumes, was brought out in 1883. Domett's long period of colonial service, and his great literary work, conjoined to his close friendship with the greatest poet of the day, won recognition for him in England, and he was awarded the honour of C.M.G. in 1880.

Another volume of verse, a book called “Flotsam and Jetsam,” including some of his early poems, was published in 1877. He died on November 2, 1887, two years before Browning. Kenyon wrote of him, in allusion to his hero-worship of Browning and his fervent love of the romantic and poetic: “The bright-eyed enthusiasm which seems to show itself in his portrait” [Lance's drawing of 1836] “lasted apparently to the end.”