Read "The White Cliffs" by Alice Duer Miller online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
London, just before dawn--immense and dark-- Smell of wet earth and growth from the empty park, Pall Mall vacant--Whitehall deserted. Johnnie and I Strolling together, averse to saying good-by-- Strolling away from some party in silence profound, Only far off in Mayfair, piercing, the sound Of a footman's whistle--the rhythm of hoofs on wood, Further and further away. . And now we stood On a bridge, where a poet came to keep Vigil while all the city lay asleep-- Westminster Bridge--and soon the sun would rise, And I should see it with my very eyes! Yes, now it came--a broad and awful glow Out of the violet mists of dawn. "Ah, no," I said, "earth hath not anything to show More fair--changed though it be--than this." A curious background surely for a kiss-- Our first--Westminster Bridge at break of day-- Settings by Wordsworth, as John used to say.