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

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 Alchemy Of Grief - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Constantinople

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Echoes

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

To A Musician

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

    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

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    Burns gravely, the walls are withdrawn;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

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

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

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