Envoi

    Beloved, when my heart's awake to God
    And all the world becomes His testimony,
    In you I most do see, in your brave spirit,
    Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light,
    A pure jet from the fountain of all being,
    A scripture clearer than all else to read.

    And when belief was dead and God a myth,
    And the world seemed a wandering mote of evil,
    Endurable only by its impermanence,
    And all the planets perishable urns
    Of perished ashes, to you alone I clung
    Amid the unspeakable loneliness of the universe.

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

The Roof

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Song

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

A Chant

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.

L'envoi

        God willed, who never needed speech,
                "Let all things be:"
        And, lo, the starry firmament
                And land and sea
        And his first thought of life that lives
                In you and me.

        His circle of eternity
                We see in part;
        Our spirits are his breath, our hearts
                Beat from his heart;
        Hence we have played as little gods
                And called it art.

        Lacking his power, we shared his dream
                Of perfect things;
        Between the tents of hope and sweet
                Rememberings
        Have sat in ashes, but our souls
                Went forth on wings.

        Where life fell short of some desire
...

John Charles McNeill

Starlight

    Last night I lay in an open field
    And looked at the stars with lips sealed;
    No noise moved the windless air,
    And I looked at the stars with steady stare.

    There were some that glittered and some that shone
    With a soft and equal glow, and one
    That queened it over the sprinkled round,
    Swaying the host with silent sound.

    "Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue,
    I will learn and hold and master you;
    I will yoke and scorn you as I can,
    For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man."

    Grass to my cheek in the dewy field,
    I lay quite still with lips sealed,
    And the pride of a man and his rigid gaze
    Stalked like swords on heaven's ways.

    But through a sudden gate there st...

John Collings Squire, Sir

L' Envoi

Ye voices, that arose
After the Evening's close,
And whispered to my restless heart repose!

Go, breathe it in the ear
Of all who doubt and fear,
And say to them, "Be of good cheer!"

Ye sounds, so low and calm,
That in the groves of balm
Seemed to me like an angel's psalm!

Go, mingle yet once more
With the perpetual roar
Of the pine forest dark and hoar!

Tongues of the dead, not lost
But speaking from deaths frost,
Like fiery tongues at Pentecost!

Glimmer, as funeral lamps,
Amid the chills and damps
Of the vast plain where Death encamps!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Song

    You are my sky; beneath your circling kindness
    My meadows all take in the light and grow;
        Laugh with the joy you've given,
        The joy you've given,
    And open in a thousand buds, and blow.

    But when you are sombre, sad, averse, forgetful,
    Heavily veiled by clouds that brood with rain,
        Dumbly I lie all shadowed,
        I lie all shadowed,
    And dumbly wait for you to shine again.

John Collings Squire, Sir

Prologue: In Darkness

    With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake,
    Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce ache
    That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, and in solitude bears the weight
    Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the senseless pressure of fate?

    Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so certainly it recurs?
    In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here that a song first stirs?
    Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, there will spring of a sudden, some time,
    Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the thin-blown shape of a rhyme?

John Collings Squire, Sir