At Night

    Dark fir-tops foot the moony sky,
    Blue moonlight bars the drive;
    Here at the open window I
    Sit smoking and alive.

    Wind in the branches swells and breaks
    Like ocean on a beach;
    Deep in the sky and my heart there wakes
    A thought I cannot reach.

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

Florian's Song

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Tree-Tops

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Elegy

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

The Offended Moon - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

English

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Song

    The heaven is full of the moon's light,
    The earth fades below.
    In this vast empty world of night
    I only know

    Pale-shining trees and moonlit fields,
    The bird's tune,
    And my night-flowering heart that yields
    Her fragrance to the moon.

John Collings Squire, Sir

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

A Day

    I. MORNING

    The village fades away
    Where I last night came,
    Where they housed me and fed me
    And never asked my name.

    The sun shines bright, my step is light,
    I, who have no abode,
    Jeer at the stuck, monotonous
    Black posts along the road.


    II. MIDDAY

    The wood is still,
    As here I sit
    My heart drinks in
    The peace of it.

    A something stirs
    I know not where,
    Some quiet spirit
    In the air.

    O tall straight stems!
    O cool deep green!
    O hand unfelt!
    O face unseen!


    III. EVENING

    The evening closes in,
    As down this last long lane
    I plod; there patter round
    First ...

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

Old Song

    My window is darkness,
    The sighs of the night die in silence;
    The lamp on my table
    Burns gravely, the walls are withdrawn;
    And beneath, in your darkness,
    You are sleeping and dreaming forgetful,
    But I think of you smiling,
    For I'm wakeful and now it is only an hour to the dawn.

    When the first throb of light comes
    I shall rise and go out to the garden,
    And walk the lawn's verdure
    Before the wet gossamer goes;
    And when you come down, sweet,
    All singing and light in the morning,
    Delight will break ambush
    With your garden's most fragrant and softest and reddest red rose.

John Collings Squire, Sir

In A Chair

    The room is full of the peace of night,
    The small flames murmur and flicker and sway,
    Within me is neither shadow, nor light,
    Nor night, nor twilight, nor dawn, nor day.

    For the brain strives not to the goal of thought,
    And the limbs lie wearied, and all desire
    Sleeps for a while, and I am naught
    But a pair of eyes that gaze at a fire.

John Collings Squire, Sir