The White Cliffs

Alice Duer Miller

• Publisher: Cole Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781408630167
• eBook ISBN: 9781446546307
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Alice Duer Miller's heart-warming novel written entirely in verse. The narrative follows an American girl who falls in love with an Englishman during World War I. This touching and beautiful tale will appeal to lovers of poetry and those with an interest in life during the Great War, and it is not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. Many antiquarian books such as this are increasingly hard-to-come-by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

XLVII

ROSAMUND: Susan, go home with your offspring. Fly. Live in America.

SUSAN:               Rosamund, why?

ROSAMUND: Why, my dear girl, haven’t you seen

What English country life can mean

With too small an income to keep the place

Going? Already I think I trace

A change in you, you no longer care

So much how you look or what you wear.

That coat and skirt you have on, you know

You wouldn’t have worn them ten years ago.

Those thick warm stockings—they make me sad,

Your ankles were ankles to drive men mad.

Look at your hair—you need a wave.

Get out—go home—be hard—be brave,

Or else, believe me, you’ll be a slave.

There’s something in you—dutiful—meek—

You’ll be saving your pin-money every week

To mend the roof. Well, let it leak.

Why should you care?

SUSAN:                  But I do care.

John loved this place and my boy’s the heir.

ROSAMUND: The heir to what? To a tiresome life

Drinking tea with the Vicar’s wife,

Opening bazaars, and taking the chair

At meetings for causes that you don’t care

Sixpence about and never will;

Breaking your heart over every bill.

I’ve been in the States, where everyone,

Even the poor, have a little fun.

Don’t condemn your son to be

A penniless country squire. He

Would be happier driving a tram over there

Than mouldering his life away as heir.

SUSAN: Rosamund dear, this may all be true.

I’m an American through and through.

I don’t see things as the English do,

But it’s clearly my duty, it seems to me,

To bring up John’s son, like him, to be

A country squire—poor alas,

But true to that English upper class

That does not change and does not pass.

ROSAMUND: Nonsense; it’s come to an absolute stop.

Twenty years since we sat on top

Of the world, amusing ourselves and sneering

At other manners and customs, jeering

At other nations, living in clover—

Not any more. That’s done and over.

No one nowadays cares a button

For the upper classes—they’re dead as mutton.

Go home.

SUSAN: I notice that you don’t go.

ROSAMUND: My dear, that shows how little you know.

I’m escaping the fate of my peers,

Marrying one of the profiteers,

Who hasn’t an ‘aitch’ where an ‘aitch’ should be,

But millions and millions to spend on me.

Not much fun—but there wasn’t any

Other way out. I haven’t a penny.

But with you it’s different. You can go away,

And oh, what a fool you’d be to stay.

XLVIII

RABBITS in the park,

Scuttling as we pass,

Little white tails

Against the green grass.

‘Next time, Mother,

I must really bring a gun,

I know you don’t like shooting,

But . . .!’

                     John’s own son,

That blond bowed face,

Those clear steady eyes,

Hard to be certain

That the dead don’t rise.

Jogging on his pony

Through the autumn day,

‘Bad year for fruit, Mother,

But good salt hay.’

Bowling for the village

As his father had before;

Coming home at evening

To read the cricket score,

Back to the old house

Where all his race belong,

Tired and contented—

Rosamund was wrong.

XLIX

IF some immortal strangers walked our land

And heard of death, how could they understand

That we—doomed creatures—draw our meted breath

Light-heartedly—all unconcerned with death.

So in these years between the wars did men

From happier continents look on us when

They brought us sympathy, and saw us stand

Like the proverbial ostrich—head in sand—

While youth passed resolutions not to fight,

And statesmen muttered everything was right—

Germany, a kindly, much ill-treated nation—

Russia was working out her own salvation

Within her borders. As for Spain, ah, Spain

Would buy from England when peace came again!

I listened and believed—beli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI
• VII
• VIII
• IX
• X
• XI
• XII
• XIII
• XIV
• XV
• XVI
• XVII
• XVIII
• XIX
• XX
• XXI
• XXII
• XXIII
• XXIV
• XXV
• XXVI
• XXVII
• XXVIII
• XXIX
• XXX
• XXXI
• XXXII
• XXXIII
• XXXIV
• XXXV
• XXXVI
• XXXVII
• XXXVIII
• XXXIX
• XL
• XLI
• XLII
• XLIII
• XLIV
• XLV
• XLVI
• XLVII
• XLVIII
• XLIX
• L
• LI
• LII