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

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 Stronghold

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Lines

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Florian's Song

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Behind The Lines

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.

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

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

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

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

Processes Of Thought

    I

    I find my mind as it were a deep water.

    Sometimes I play with a thought and hammer and bend it,
    Till tired and displeased with that I toss it away,
    Or absently let it slip to the yawning water:
    And down it sinks, forgotten for many a day.

    But a time comes when tide or tempest washes it
    High on the beach, and I find that shape of mine,
    Or I haul it out from the depths on some casual rope,
    Or, passing over that spot in quiet shine,

    I see, where my boat's shadow makes deep the water,
    A patch of colour, far down, from the bottom apart,
    A wavering sign like the gleam from an ancient anchor,
    Brown fixing and fleeting flakes; and I feel my heart

    Wake to a strange excitement; so that I s...

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