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

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 Dog's Death

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Rivers

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

I Shall Make Beauty

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Ode: In A Restaurant

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.

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

Song

    There is a wood where the fairies dance
    All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily,
    By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole,
    And the moon through the branches darts.

    Light on the grass their slim limbs glance,
    Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison,
    And the moon discovers that they all have lovers,
    But they never break their hearts.

    They never grieve at all for sands that run,
    They never know regret for a deed that's done,
    And they never think of going to a shed with a gun
    At the rising of the sun.

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

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

Song

    Eyes like flowers and falling hair
    Seldom seen, nor ever long,
    Then I did not know you were
    Destined subject for a song:
    Sharing your unconsciousness
    Of your double loveliness,
    Unaware how fair you were,
    Peaceful eyes and shadowy hair.

    Only, now your beauty falls
    Sweetly on some other place,
    Lonely reverie recalls
    More than anything your face;
    Any idle hour may find
    Stealing on my captured mind,
    Faintly merging from the air,
    Eyes like flowers and falling hair.

John Collings Squire, Sir

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