Faith

    When I see truth, do I seek truth
    Only that I may things denote,
    And, rich by striving, deck my youth
    As with a vain unusual coat?

    Or seek I truth for other ends:
    That she in other hearts may stir,
    That even my most familiar friends
    May turn from me to look on her?

    So I this day myself was asking;
    Out of the window skies were blue
    And Thames was in the sunlight basking;
    My thoughts coiled inwards like a screw.

    I watched them anxious for a while;
    Then quietly, as I did watch,
    Spread in my soul a sudden smile:
    I knew that no firm thing they'd catch.

    And I remembered if I leapt
    Upon the bosom of the wind
    It would sustain me; question slept;
    I felt that I had almost sinned.

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

A Fresh Morning

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Elegy

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Under

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

The Birds

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Tree-Tops

    There beyond my window ledge,
    Heaped against the sky, a hedge
    Of huge and waving tree-tops stands
    With multitudes of fluttering hands.

    Wave they, beat they, to and fro,
    Never stillness may they know,
    Plunged by the wind and hurled and torn
    Anguished, purposeless, forlorn.

    "O ferocious, O despairing,
    In huddled isolation faring
    Through a scattered universe,
    Lost coins from the Almighty's purse!"

    "No, below you do not see
    The firm foundations of the tree;
    Anchored to a rock beneath
    We laugh in the hammering tempest's teeth.

    "Boughs like men but burgeons are
    On an adamantine star;
    Men are myriad blossoms on
    A staunch and cosmic skeleton."

John Collings Squire, Sir

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

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 Chant

    Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
    That has known many springs and many petals fall
    Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
    And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall.

    Faded is the memory of old things done,
    Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;
    They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,
    And a sky silver-blue arches over all.

    O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs
    With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find
    Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers
    Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind.

John Collings Squire, Sir

A Reasonable Protestation

    [To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of dogmatic statement]

    Not, I suppose, since I deny
    Appearance is reality,
    And doubt the substance of the earth
    Does your remonstrance come to birth;
    Not that at once I both affirm
    'Tis not the skin that makes the worm
    And every tactile thing with mass
    Must find its symbol in the grass
    And with a cool conviction say
    Even a critic's more than clay
    And every dog outlives his day.
    This kind of vagueness suits your view,
    You would not carp at it; for you
    Did never stand with those who take
    Their pleasures in a world opaque.
    For you a tree would never be
    Lovely were it but a tree,
    And earthly splendours never splendid

John Collings Squire, Sir

In The Park

    This dense hard ground I tread.
    These iron bars that ripple past,
    Will they unshaken stand when I am dead
    And my deep thoughts outlast?

    Is it my spirit slips,
    Falls, like this leaf I kick aside;
    This firmness that I feel about my lips,
    Is it but empty pride?

    Mute knowledge conquers me;
    I contemplate them as they are,
    Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee,
    Less hard, more transient far

    Than those unbodied hues
    The sunset flings on the calm river;
    And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes
    And my hands with empire quiver.

    Now light the ground I tread,
    I walk not now but rather float;
    Clear but unreal is the scene outspread,
    Pitiful,...

John Collings Squire, Sir