The Roof

    I

    When the clouds hide the sun away
    The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
    And when the rain adown it streams
    'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.

    When the clouds vanish and the rain
    Stops, and the sun comes out again,
    It shimmers golden in the sun
    Almost too bright to look upon.

    But soon beneath the steady rays
    The roof is dried and reft of blaze,
    'Tis dusty yellow traversed through
    By long thin lines of deepest blue.

    Then at the last, as night draws near,
    The lines grow faint and disappear,
    The roof becomes a purple mist,
    A great square darkening amethyst

    Which sinks into the gathering shade
    Till separate form and colour fade,
    And it is but a patch which mars
    The beauty of a field of stars.


    II

    It stands so lonely in the sky
    The sparrows never come thereby,
    The glossy starlings seldom stop
    To preen and chatter on the top.

    For a whole week sometimes up there
    No wing-wave stirs the quiet air,
    The roof lies silent and serene
    As though no life had ever been;

    Till some bright afternoon, athwart
    The edge two sudden shadows dart,
    And two white pigeons with pink feet
    Flutter above and pitch on it.

    Jerking their necks out as they walk
    They talk awhile their pigeon-talk,
    A low continuous murmur blent
    Of mock reproaches and content.

    Then cease, and sit there warm and white
    An hour, till in the fading light
    They wake, and know the close of day,
    Flutter above, and fly away,

    Leaving the roof whereon they sat
    As 'twas before, a peaceful flat
    Expanse, as silent and serene
    As though no life had ever been.

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

Constantinople

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English

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A House

    Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
    In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
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    Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

    And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
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    A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

    No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,
    So inharmonious, so ill arranged;
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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,
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    Of shadowed grass in spring pierced with crocuses,
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    If we stood by the porch we saw on either hand
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A Specimen of Clare's rough drafts

A Specimen of Clare's rough drafts

In a huge cloud of mountain hue
The sun sets dark nor shudders through
One single beam to shine again
Tis night already in the lane

The settled clouds in ridges lie
And some swell mountains calm and high

Clouds rack and drive before the wind
In shapes and forms of every kind
Like waves that rise without the roars
And rocks that guard untrodden shores
Now castles pass majestic bye
And ships in peaceful havens lie
These gone ten thousand shapes ensue
For ever beautiful and new

The scattered clouds lie calm and still
And day throws gold on every hill
Their thousand heads in glorys run
As each were worlds and owned a sun
The rime it clings to every thing
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Town

    Mostly in a dull rotation
    We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.
    Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation,
    Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.

    Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches,
    Like eyeless insects in a murky pond
    That out and out this city stretches,
    Away, away, and there is no beyond.

    No larger earth, no loftier heaven,
    No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe.    And yet,
    Even to us sometimes is given
    Visions of things we other times forget.

    Some day is done, its labour ended,
    And as we sit and brood at windows high,
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Winter Nightfall

    The old yellow stucco
    Of the time of the Regent
    Is flaking and peeling:
    The rows of square windows
    In the straight yellow building
    Are empty and still;
    And the dusty dark evergreens
    Guarding the wicket
    Are draped with wet cobwebs,
    And above this poor wilderness
    Toneless and sombre
    Is the flat of the hill.

    They said that a colonel
    Who long ago died here
    Was the last one to live here:
    An old retired colonel,
    Some Fraser or Murray,
    I don't know his name;
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    And the shells of him vanished
    Beyond all speculation;
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    Silence and emptiness,
    And nobody came.

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The Birds

    (To Edmund Gosse)

    Within mankind's duration, so they say,
    Khephren and Ninus lived but yesterday.
    Asia had no name till man was old
    And long had learned the use of iron and gold;
    And æons had passed, when the first corn was planted,
    Since first the use of syllables was granted.

    Men were on earth while climates slowly swung,
    Fanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long
    Subsidence turned great continents to sea,
    And seas dried up, dried up interminably,
    Age after age; enormous seas were dried
    Amid wastes of land.    And the last monsters died.

    Earth wore another face.    O since that prime
    Man with how many works has sprinkled time!
    Hammering, hewing, digging tunnels, roads;

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