Written for the 200th performance of “If,” at the Ambassador’s Theatre, October 29th, 1921.
FROM where the turquoise rivers stray
The caravans no longer go
With camels by the mountain way:
The track is all untrodden snow,
Where dawns unseen of travellers glow
Above the precipices sheer.
Harwood has purchased Debureau:
The Pass is closed on Shaldomir.
Miss Gladys Cooper long ago
Left for her Playhouse. Welladay!
Business, or Fate, would have it so.
Miss Titheradge is gone this day.
Like poet’s dreams they drift away.
Ainley in Kent will disappear
And lightly with a niblick play.
The Pass is closed on Shaldomir.
The sombre Ali turneth gay,
And Winston leaner seems to grow;
Binyon will sing some other lay;
And Caine has left, and Banks also.
Sherbrook, no more Miralda’s foe,
Goes hence, and we have only here
The empty trappings of a show.
The Pass is closed on Shaldomir.
L’Envoi
Trotsky! Or whosoe’er to-day
Usurps the place of princes, hear!
For good and all no man shall say —
The Pass is closed on Shaldomir.