A House

    Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
    In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
    And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
    Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

    And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
    From that faint exquisite celestial strand,
    And turn and see again the only dwelling-place
    In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

    The house, that house, O now what change has come to it,
    Its crude red-brick façade, its roof of slate;
    What imperceptible swift hand has given it
    A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

    No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,
    So inharmonious, so ill arranged;
    That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was;
    No, it is not that any line has changed.

    Only that loneliness is now accentuate
    And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave,
    This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again,
    And all man's energies seem very brave.

    And this mean edifice, which some dull architect
    Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind,
    Takes on the quality of that magnificent
    Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.

    Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be,
    Yet imperturbable that house will rest,
    Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny,
    Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.

    Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac
    May howl their menaces, and hail descend;
    Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly,
    Not even scornfully, and wait the end.

    And all a universe of nameless messengers
    From unknown distances may whisper fear,
    And it will imitate immortal permanence,
    And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.

    It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too,
    When there is none to watch, no alien eyes
    To watch its ugliness assume a majesty
    From this great solitude of evening skies.

    So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around,
    While life remains to it prepared to outface
    Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries
    May hide and wait for it in time and space.

John Collings Squire, Sir

John Collings Squire, also known as Sir John Squire, was an influential British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the early 20th century. He is best known for his role as editor of the London Mercury, a powerful literary journal of the time. Squire was a leading figure in the Georgian poetry movement, which sought to return English poetry to its traditional form and diction.

John Collings Squire, Sir

Antinomies On A Railway Station

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

The Alchemy Of Grief - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Winter Nightfall

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

The Ship

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Antinomies On A Railway Station

    As I stand waiting in the rain
    For the foggy hoot of the London train,
    Gazing at silent wall and lamp
    And post and rail and platform damp,
    What is this power that comes to my sight
    That I see a night without the night,
    That I see them clear, yet look them through,
    The silvery things and the darkly blue,
    That the solid wall seems soft as death,
    A wavering and unanchored wraith,
    And rails that shine and stones that stream
    Unsubstantial as a dream?
    What sudden door has opened so,
    What hand has passed, that I should know
    This moving vision not a trance
    That melts the globe of circumstance,
    This sight that marks not least or most
    And makes a stone a passing ghost?
    Is it that a yea...

John Collings Squire, Sir

Winter Nightfall

    The old yellow stucco
    Of the time of the Regent
    Is flaking and peeling:
    The rows of square windows
    In the straight yellow building
    Are empty and still;
    And the dusty dark evergreens
    Guarding the wicket
    Are draped with wet cobwebs,
    And above this poor wilderness
    Toneless and sombre
    Is the flat of the hill.

    They said that a colonel
    Who long ago died here
    Was the last one to live here:
    An old retired colonel,
    Some Fraser or Murray,
    I don't know his name;
    Death came here and summoned him,
    And the shells of him vanished
    Beyond all speculation;
    And silence resumed here,
    Silence and emptiness,
    And nobody came.

    Was it ...

John Collings Squire, Sir

Town

    Mostly in a dull rotation
    We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.
    Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation,
    Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.

    Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches,
    Like eyeless insects in a murky pond
    That out and out this city stretches,
    Away, away, and there is no beyond.

    No larger earth, no loftier heaven,
    No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe.    And yet,
    Even to us sometimes is given
    Visions of things we other times forget.

    Some day is done, its labour ended,
    And as we sit and brood at windows high,
    A steady wind from far descended,
    Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;

    There are the empty waiting spaces,
    We w...

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Roof

    I

    When the clouds hide the sun away
    The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
    And when the rain adown it streams
    'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.

    When the clouds vanish and the rain
    Stops, and the sun comes out again,
    It shimmers golden in the sun
    Almost too bright to look upon.

    But soon beneath the steady rays
    The roof is dried and reft of blaze,
    'Tis dusty yellow traversed through
    By long thin lines of deepest blue.

    Then at the last, as night draws near,
    The lines grow faint and disappear,
    The roof becomes a purple mist,
    A great square darkening amethyst

    Which sinks into the gathering shade
    Till separate form and colour fade,
    And ...

John Collings Squire, Sir

On A Friend Recently Dead

    I

    The stream goes fast.
    When this that is the present is the past,
    'Twill be as all the other pasts have been,
    A failing hill, a daily dimming scene,
    A far strange port with foreign life astir
    The ship has left behind, the voyager
    Will never return to; no, nor see again,
    Though with a heart full of longing he may strain
    Back to project himself, and once more count
    The boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount,
    Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires,
    The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires,
    The gap of the market-place, and watch again
    The coloured groups of women, and the men
    Lounging at ease along the low stone wall
    That fringed the harbour; and there beyond it all<...

John Collings Squire, Sir

A Far Place

    (To K. Wigram.)

    Sheltered, when the rain blew over the hills it was,
    Sunny all day when the days of summer were long,
    Beyond all rumour of labouring towns it was,
    But at dawn and evening its trees were noisy with song.

    There were four elms on the southward lawn standing,
    Their great trunks evenly set in a square
    Of shadowed grass in spring pierced with crocuses,
    And their tops met high in the empty air.

    Where the morning rose the grey church was below us,
    If we stood by the porch we saw on either hand
    The ground falling, the trees falling, and meadows,
    A river, hamlets and spires: a chequered land,

    A wide country where cloud shadows went chasing
    Mile after mile, diminishing fast, ...

John Collings Squire, Sir