Poems by Sir John Collings Squire Volume I Part 3

Left and right my vision drifts, By yonder towers I linger, Where Westminster's cathedral lifts Its belled Byzantine finger,

And here against my perched home Where hold wise converse daily The loftier and the lesser dome, St Paul's and the Old Bailey.

FLORIAN'S SONG

My soul, it shall not take us, O we will escape This world that strives to break us And cast us to its shape; Its chisel shall not enter, Its fire shall not touch, Hard from rim to centre, We will not crack or s.m.u.tch.

'Gainst words sweet and flowered We have an amulet, We will not play the coward For any black threat; If we but give endurance To what is now within-- The single a.s.surance That it is good to win.

Slaves think it better To be weak than strong, Whose hate is a fetter And their love a thong.

But we will view those others With eyes like stone, And if we have no brothers We will walk alone.

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 unanch.o.r.ed wraith, And rails that shine and stones that stream Unsubstantial as a dream?

What sudden door has opened so, What hand has pa.s.sed, that I should know This moving vision not a trance That melts the globe of circ.u.mstance, This sight that marks not least or most And makes a stone a pa.s.sing ghost?

Is it that a year ago I stood upon this self-same spot; Is it that since a year ago The place and I have altered not; Is it that I half forgot, A year ago, and all despised For a s.p.a.ce the things that I had prized: The race of life, the glittering show?

Is it that now a year has pa.s.sed In vain pursuit of glittering things, In fruitless searching, shouting, running, And greedy lies and candour cunning, Here as I stand the year above Sudden the heats and the strivings fail And fall away, a fluctuant veil, And the fixed familiar stones restore The old appearance-buried core, The unmoving and essential me, The eternal personality Alone enduring first and last?

No, this I have known in other ways, In other places, other days.

Not only here, on this one peak, Do fixity and beauty speak Of the delusiveness of change, Of the transparency of form, The bootless stress of minds that range, The awful calm behind the storm.

In many places, many days, The invaded soul receives the rays Of countries she was nurtured in, Speaks in her silent language strange To that beyond which is her kin.

Even in peopled streets at times A metaphysic arm is thrust Through the part.i.tioning fabric thin, And tears away the darkening pall Cast by the bright phenomenal, And clears the obscured spirit's mirror From shadows of deceptive error, And shows the bells and all their ringing, And all the crowds and all their singing, Carillons that are nothing's chimes And dust that is not even dust....

But rarely hold I converse thus Where shapes are bright and clamorous, More often comes the word divine In places motionless and far; Beneath the white peculiar shine Of sunless summer afternoons; At eventide on pale lagoons Where hangs reflected one pale star; Or deep in the green solitudes Of still erect entranced woods.

O, in the woods alone lying, Scarce a bough in the wind sighing, Gaze I long with fervid power At leaf and branch and gra.s.s and flower, Breathe I breaths of trembling sight Shed from great urns of green delight, Take I draughts and drink them up Poured from many a stalk and cup.

Now do I burn for nothing more Than thus to gaze, thus to adore This exquisiteness of nature ever In silence....

But with instant light Rends the film; with joy I quiver To see with new celestial sight Flower and leaf and gra.s.s and tree, Doomed barks on an eternal sea, Flit phantom-like as transient smoke.

Beauty herself her spell has broke, Beauty, the herald and the lure, Her message told, may not endure; Her portal opened, she has died, Supreme immortal suicide.

Yes, sleepless nature soundless flings Invisible grapples round the soul, Drawing her through the web of things To the primal end of her journeyings, Her ultimate and constant pole.

For Beauty with her hands that beckon Is but the Prophet of a Higher, A flaming and ephemeral beacon, A Phoenix perishing by fire.

Herself from us herself estranges, Herself her mighty tale doth kill, That all things change yet nothing changes.

That all things move yet all are still.

I cannot sink, I cannot climb, Now that I see my ancient dwelling, The central orb untouched of time, And taste a peace all bliss excelling.

Now I have broken Beauty's wall, Now that my kindred world I hold, I care not though the cities fall And the green earth go cold.

TREE-TOPS

There beyond my window ledge, Heaped against the sky, a hedge Of huge and waving tree-tops stands With mult.i.tudes 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; Anch.o.r.ed 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."

ARTEMIS ALTERA

O full of candour and compa.s.sion, Whom love and worship both would praise, Love cannot frame nor worship fashion The image of your fearless ways!

How show your n.o.ble brow's dark pallor, Your chivalrous casque of ebon hair, Your eyes' bright strength, your lips' soft valour, Your supple shoulders and hands that dare?

Our souls when navely you examine, Your sword of innocence, flaming, huge, Sweeps over us, and there is famine Within the ports of subterfuge.

You hate contempt and love not laughter; With your sharp spear of virgin will You harry the wicked strong; but after, O huntress who could never kill,

Should they be trodden down or pierced, Swift, swift, you fly with burning cheek To place your beauty's shield reversed Above the vile defenceless weak!

EPILOGUE

Than farthest stars more distant, A mile more, A mile more, A voice cries on insistent: "You may smile more if you will;

"You may sing too and spring too; But numb at last And dumb at last, Whatever port you cling to, You must come at last to a hill.

"And never a man you'll find there To take your hand And shake your hand; But when you go behind there You must make your hand a sword

"To fence with a foeman swarthy, And swink there Nor shrink there, Though cowardly and worthy Must drink there one reward."

DIALOGUE

THE ONE

The dead man's gone, the live man's sad, the dying leaf shakes on the tree, The wind constrains the window-panes and moans like moaning of the sea, And sour's the taste now culled in haste of lovely things I won too late, And loud and loud above the crowd the Voice of One more strong than we.