Airship Over Suburb

    A smooth blue sky with puffed motionless clouds.

    Standing over the plain of red roofs and bushy trees
    The bright coloured shell of the large enamelled sky.

    Out of the distance pointing, a cut dark shape
    That moves this way at leisure, then hesitates and turns:
    And its darkness suddenly dies as it turns and shows
    A gleaming silver, white against even the whitest cloud.

    Across the blue and the low small clouds it moves
    Level, with a floating cloud-like motion of its own,
    Peaceful, sunny and slow, a thing of summer itself,
    Above the basking earth, travelling the clouds and the sky.

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

Lines

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

The Roof

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Epilogue

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Late Snow

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

English

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August Moon

    (To F. S.)

    In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon
    And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.
    Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored
    After the heat of the day, and await the dark.

    And here, where the side of the road shelves into the river
    At the gap where barges load and horses drink,
    There are no horses.    And the river is full
    And the water stands by the shore and does not lap.

    And a barge lies up for the night this side of the island,
    The bargeman sits in the bows and smokes his pipe
    And his wife by the cabin stirs.    Behind me voices pass.

    Calm sky, calm river: and a few calm things reflected.
    And all as yet keep their colours; the island osiers...

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

Clouds

'Tis strange to leave this world of woods and hills,
This world of little farms, and shady mills, -
Of fields, and water-meadows fair,
Upon some sad and shadowy day
When all the skies are overcast and grey,
And climb up through the gloomy air,
And ever hurry higher still, and higher,
Till underneath you lies a far-flung shire
All sober-hued beneath the ceiling pale
Of crawling clouds, whose barrier soon you reach,
And through their clammy vapours swiftly sail,
Their chill defences hoping soon to breach -
To see no skies above, no ground below,
And in that nothingness toss to and fro
Is no sweet moment - will it never cease? -
Climbing and diving, thrown from side to side, -
All suddenly there comes a sense of peace
And o'er a wondrous scenery we glide.

Paul Bewsher

In An Orchard

    Airy and quick and wise
    In the shed light of the sun,
    You clasp with friendly eyes
    The thoughts from mine that run.

    But something breaks the link;
    I solitary stand
    By a giant gully's brink
    In some vast gloomy land.

    Sole central watcher, I
    With steadfast sadness now
    In that waste place descry
    'Neath the awful heavens how

    Your life doth dizzy drop
    A little foam of flame
    From a peak without a top
    To a pit without a name.

John Collings Squire, Sir

Late Snow

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling,
Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges
That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences,
Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted
The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air;
They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits,
Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled,
Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding,
But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland
Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these mo...

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