Part 2 — SUBURB
Reading edition
Dull and hard the low wind creaks Among the rustling pampas plumes. Drearily the year consumes Its fifty-two insipid weeks.
Most of the gray-green meadow land Was sold in parsimonious lots; The dingy houses stand Pressed by some stout contractor's hand Tightly together in their plots.
Through builded banks the sullen river Gropes, where its houses crouch and shiver. Over the bridge the tyrant train Shrieks, and emerges on the plain.
In all the better gardens you may pass, (Product of many careful Saturdays), Large red geraniums and tall pampas grass Adorn the plots and mark the gravelled ways.
Sometimes in the background may be seen A private summer-house in white or green. Here on warm nights the daughter brings Her vacillating clerk, To talk of small exciting things And touch his fingers through the dark.
He, in the uncomfortable breach Between her trilling laughters, Promises, in halting speech, Hopeless immense Hereafters.
She trembles like the pampas plumes. Her strained lips haggle. He assumes The serious quest....
Now as the train is whistling past He takes her in his arms at last.
It's done. She blushes at his side Across the lawn—a bride, a bride.
........
The stout contractor will design, The lazy laborers will prepare, Another villa on the line; In the little garden-square Pampas grass will rustle there.
Harold Monro [1879-1932]