It's only logical that the thought to round out the day would be that of Alice Duer Miller. Wiki explains:In 1940, she wrote the verse novel The White Cliffs. The story is of an American girl who coming to London as a tourist, meets and marries a young upper-class Englishman in the period just before the First World War.The War begins and he goes to the front. He is killed just before the end of the War, leaving her with a young son. Her son is the heir to the family estate. Despite the pull of her own country and the impoverished condition of the estate, she decides to stay and live the traditional life of a member of the English upper class.
The story concludes as The Second World War commences and she worries that her son, like his father, will be killed fighting for the country he loves.
The poem was spectacularly successful on both sides of the Atlantic, selling eventually approaching a million copies - an unheard of number for a book of verse. The poem ends with the lines:
- ... I am American bred
- I have seen much to hate here - much to forgive,
- But in a world in which England is finished and dead,
- I do not wish to live.
Very true James. It's just a shame all those Eurocrats would disagree...
ReplyDeleteLong live England and St George. What am I saying, a half Scot? Well there must be some Sassenach blood in me somewhere.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
ReplyDeleteNice thought for a special day.
ReplyDeleteOne can be a Scot and respect the right of the others to exist and vice versa. I don't see any anomaly, for example, in supporting the Cornish movement - I wish them well. But England for the English etc.
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