free-verse40 lines
Back to the Border
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)The tremulous morning is breaking
Against the white waste of the sky,
And hundreds of birds are awaking
In tamarisk bushes hard by.
I, waiting alone in the station,
Can hear in the distance, grey-blue,
The sound of that iron desolation,
The train that will bear me from you.
'T will carry me under your casement,
You'll feel in your dreams as you lie
The quiver, from gable to basement,
The rush of my train sweeping by.
And I shall look out as I pass it, -
Your dear, unforgettable door,
'T was ours till last night, but alas! it
Will never be mine any more.
Through twilight blue-grey and uncertain,
Where frost leaves the window-pane free,
I'll look at the tinsel-edged curtain
That hid so much pleasure for me.
I go to my long undone duty
Alone in the chill and the gloom,
My eyes are still full of the beauty
I leave in your rose-scented room.
Lie still in your dreams; for your tresses
Are free of my lingering kiss.
I keep you awake with caresses
No longer; be happy in this!
From passion you told me you hated
You're now and for ever set free,
I pass in my train, sorrow-weighted,
Your house that was Heaven to me.
You won't find a trace, when you waken,
Of me or my love of the past,
Rise up and rejoice! I have taken
My longed-for departure at last.
My fervent and useless persistence
You never need suffer again,
Nor even perceive in the distance
The smoke of my vanishing train!