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Robert Laurence Binyon - Mother Of Exiles
Work rating: Low

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?
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