Mother of Exiles
What far—off trouble steals
In soft—blown drifts of glimmering rain?
What is it the wind feels,
What sighing of what old home—seeking pain
Among the hurried footsteps and the wheels,
The living low continual roar
Of night and London? What is it comes near,
Felt like a blind man’s touch along the wall
Questing, and strange, like fear,
Lets a lone silence 'mid the turmoil fall,
Makes the long street seem vaster than before,
And the tall lamp, above dim passers—by,
Gleam solitary as on an ocean shore.
Ships on far tracks are stemming through the night;
South, east and west by foreign stars they steer;
Another half—world in the sun lies bright;
The darkness and the wind are here.
And now the rare late footfall scarce is heard,
But the wind cries along the emptied street.
In cowering lamp—light flicker the fine drops
To vanish wildly blurred;
A hunted sky flies over the housetops.
Importunate gusts beat
Shaking the windows, knocking at the doors
As with phantasmal hands,
A crying as of spirits from far shores
And the bright under—lands,
Seeking one place
That is to each eternal in the hue,
The light, the shadow of some certain hour,
One pang—like moment, years cannot efface.
O infinite remoteness, near and new!
O corner where friend parted from his friend!
O door of the first kiss, the last embrace!
O day when all was possible, O end
Irrevocable! O dream—feet that pace
One street, dear to the dead!
O London stones, that glimmer in the rain,
With bliss, with pain, have you not also bled?
