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

Friendship's Garland

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Paradise Lost

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John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

English

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    As I stand waiting in the rain
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Winter Nightfall

    The old yellow stucco
    Of the time of the Regent
    Is flaking and peeling:
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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,
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The Roof

    I

    When the clouds hide the sun away
    The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
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    '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.

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On A Friend Recently Dead

    I

    The stream goes fast.
    When this that is the present is the past,
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    The ship has left behind, the voyager
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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
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