John Collings Squire, Sir

    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.


    THE OTHER

    This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is it unprophesied or new?
    Were you so insolent to think its rope would never circle you?
    Did you then beastlike live and walk with ears and eyes that would not turn?
    Who bade you hope your service 'scape in that eternal retinue?


    THE ONE

    No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind,
    I walked no rut with eyelids shut, ...

    There is a far unfading city
    Where bright immortal people are;
    Remote from hollow shame and pity,
    Their portals frame no guiding star
    But blightless pleasure's moteless rays
    That follow their footsteps as they dance
    Long lutanied measures through a maze
    Of flower-like song and dalliance.

    There always glows the vernal sun,
    There happy birds for ever sing,
    There faint perfumed breezes run
    Through branches of eternal spring;
    There faces browned and fruit and milk
    And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses
    In galleys gowned with gold and silk
    Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.

    Coyness is not, nor bear they thought,
    Save of a shining gracious flow;
    All natural joys ...

    I vaguely wondered what you were about,
    But never wrote when you had gone away;
    Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt
    You might need faces, or have things to say.
    Did I think of you last evening?    Dead you lay.
        O bitter words of conscience
        I hold the simple message,
    And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out:
        "It shall not be to-day;

    It is still yesterday; there is time yet!"
    Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun,
    But the sun moves.    Our onward course is set,
    The wake streams out, the engine pulses run
    Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun.
        It is all too late for turning,
        You are past all mortal signal,
    There will be time for nothing but reg...

I vaguely wondered what you were about,
    But never wrote when you had gone away;
Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt
    You might need faces, or have things to say.
    Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay.
        O bitter words of conscience!
        I hold the simple message,
And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out:
        'It shall not be to-day;

It is still yesterday; there is time yet!'
    Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun,
But the sun moves. Our onward course is set,
    The wake streams out, the engine pulses run
    Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun.
        It is all too late for turning,
        You are past all mortal signal,
There will be time for nothing but regret
        And the memo...

    Beloved, when my heart's awake to God
    And all the world becomes His testimony,
    In you I most do see, in your brave spirit,
    Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light,
    A pure jet from the fountain of all being,
    A scripture clearer than all else to read.

    And when belief was dead and God a myth,
    And the world seemed a wandering mote of evil,
    Endurable only by its impermanence,
    And all the planets perishable urns
    Of perished ashes, to you alone I clung
    Amid the unspeakable loneliness of the universe.

    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."

    The leaves fall gently on the grass,
    And all the willow trees, and poplar trees, and elder trees
    That bend above her where she sleeps,
    O all the willow trees, the willow trees
    Breathe sighs upon her tomb.

    O pause and pity, as you pass,
    She loved so tenderly, so quietly, so hopelessly;
    And sometimes comes one here and weeps:
    She loved so tenderly, so tenderly,
    And never told them whom.

    When I see truth, do I seek truth
    Only that I may things denote,
    And, rich by striving, deck my youth
    As with a vain unusual coat?

    Or seek I truth for other ends:
    That she in other hearts may stir,
    That even my most familiar friends
    May turn from me to look on her?

    So I this day myself was asking;
    Out of the window skies were blue
    And Thames was in the sunlight basking;
    My thoughts coiled inwards like a screw.

    I watched them anxious for a while;
    Then quietly, as I did watch,
    Spread in my soul a sudden smile:
    I knew that no firm thing they'd catch.

    And I remembered if I leapt
    Upon the bosom of the wind
    It would sustain me; question slept;
    I fel...

    Wind waves the reeds by the river,
    Grey sky lids the leaden water.
    Ducks fly low across the water,
    Three flying: one quacks sadly.

    Grey are the sky and the water,
    Green the lost ribbons of reed-beds,
    Small in the silence a black boat
    Floats upon wide pale mirrors.

    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 smutch.

    '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 assurance
    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.

    Death in the cold grey morning
    Came to the man where he lay;
    And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered
    And the dawn was grey.

    And the face of the man was grey in the dawn,
    And the watchers by the bed
    Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves,
    That the man was dead.

    I

    When I was a boy there was a friend of mine:
    We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine,
    Stupid old animals who never understood
    And never had an impulse and said "you must be good."

    We slank like stoats and fled like foxes,
    We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes,
    Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame,
    O the surprise when the postman came!

    We stole eggs and apples and made fine hay
    In people's houses when people were away,
    We broke street lamps and away we ran,
    Then I was a boy but now I am a man.

    Now I am a man and don't have any fun,
    I hardly ever shout and I never, never run,
    And I don't care if he's dead that friend of mine,
    For then I was a boy and now...