The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller

And still I did not see my life was changed, Utterly different--by this love estranged Forever and ever from my native land; That I was now of that unhappy band Who lose the old, and cannot gain the new However loving and however true To their new duties. I could never be An English woman, there was that in me Puritan, stubborn, that would not agree To English standards, though I did not see The truth, because I thought them, good or ill, So great a people--and I think so still.

But a day came when I was forced to face Facts. I was taken down to see the place, The family place in Devon--and John's mother. "Of course, you understand," he said, "my brother Will have the place." He smiled; he was so sure The world was better for primogeniture. And yet he loved that place, as Englishmen Do love their native countryside, and when The day should be as it was sure to be-- When this was home no more to him--when he Could go there only when his brother's wife Should ask him--to a room not his--his life Would shrink and lose its meaning. How unjust, I thought. Why do they feel it must Go to that idle, insolent eldest son? Well, in the end it went to neither one.