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To F. C. M.
MY dear, the time has come to say | |
| Farewell to London town, | |
| Farewell to each familiar street, | |
| The room where we look’d down | |
| Upon the people going by, | 5 |
| The river flowing fast: | |
| The innumerable shine of lamps, | |
| The bridges and—our past. | |
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| Our past of London days and nights, | |
| When every night we dream’d | 10 |
| Of Love and Art and Happiness, | |
| And every day it seem’d, | |
| Ah! little room, you held my life, | |
| In you I found my all; | |
| A white hand on the mantelpiece, | 15 |
| A shadow on the wall. | |
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| My dear, what dinners we have had, | |
| What cigarettes and wine | |
| In faded corners of Soho, | |
| Your fingers touching mine! | 20 |
| And now the time has come to say | |
| Farewell to London town; | |
| The prologue of our play is done, | |
| So ring the curtain down. | |
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| There lies a crowded life ahead | 25 |
| In field and sleepy lane, | |
| A fairer picture than we saw | |
| Framed in our window-pane. | |
| There’ll be the stars on summer nights, | |
| The white moon thro’ the trees, | 30 |
| Moths, and the song of nightingales | |
| To float along the breeze. | |
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| And in the morning we shall see | |
| The swallows in the sun, | |
| And hear the cuckoo on the hill | 35 |
| Welcome a day begun. | |
| And life will open with the rose | |
| For me, sweet, and for you, | |
| And on our life and on the rose | |
| How soft the falling dew! | 40 |
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| So let us take this tranquil path, | |
| But drop a parting tear | |
| For town, whose greatest gift to us | |
| Was to be lovers here. | |
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