Poems by Sir John Collings Squire Volume II Part 3

(_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, Their great trunks evenly set in a square Of shadowed gra.s.s in spring pierced with crocuses, And their tops met high in the empty air.

Where the morning rose the grey church was below us, If we stood by the porch we saw on either hand The ground falling, the trees falling, and meadows, A river, hamlets and spires: a chequered land,

A wide country where cloud shadows went chasing Mile after mile, diminis.h.i.+ng fast, until They met the far blue downs; but round the corner The western garden lay lonely under the hill.

And closed in the western garden, under the hillside, Where silence was and the rest of the world was gone, We saw and took the curving year's munificence: Changing from flower to flower the garden shone.

Early its walks were fringed with little rock-plants, Sprays and tufts of blossom, white, yellow, and blue, And all about were sprinkled stars of narcissus, And swathes of tulips all over the garden grew.

White groups and pink, red, crimson and lemon-yellow, And the yellow-and-red-streaked tulips once loved by a boy; Red and yellow their stiff and varnished petals, And the scent of them stings me still with a youthful joy.

And in the season of perfect and frailest beauty, Pear-blossom broke and the lilacs' waxen cones, And a tranced laburnum trailing its veils of yellow Tenderly drooped over the ivied stones.

The lilacs browned, a breath dried the laburnum, The swollen peonies scattered the earth with blood, And the rhododendrons shed their sumptuous mantles, And the marshalled irises unsceptred stood.

And the borders filled with daisies and pied sweet-williams And busy pansies; and there as we gazed and dreamed, And breathed the swooning smell of the packed carnations, The present was always the crown of all: it seemed

Each month more beautiful sprang from a robe discarded, The year all effortless dropt the best away And struck the heart with loveliness new, more lavish; When the clambering rose had blown and died, by day

The broad-leaved tapering many-s.h.i.+elded hollyhocks Stood like pillars and shone to the August sun, The glimmering cups of waking evening primroses Filled the dusk now the scent of the rose was done.

A wall there was and a door to the rose-garden, And out of that a gate to the orchard led, And there was the last hedge, and the turf sloped upward Till the sky was cut by the hill's line overhead.

And thither at times we climbed, and far below us That world that had made the world remote was seen, Small, a huddle of russet roofs and chimneys, And its guard of elms like bushes against the green:

One spot in the country, little and mild and homely, The nearest house of a wide, populous plain....

But down at evening under the stars and the branches In the whispering garden we lost the world again.

Whispering, faint, the garden under the hillside...

Under the stars.... Is it true that we lived there long?

Was it certainly so? Did ever we know that dwelling, Breathe that night, and hear in the night that song?

LATE SNOW

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling, Interminably pa.s.sing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences, Came gullies and pa.s.sed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air; They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits, Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled, Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding, But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland Pa.s.sed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, And lovely the film of falling flakes, so wayward and slack; But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

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 s.h.i.+ne again.

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-s.h.i.+ning trees and moonlit fields, The bird's tune, And my night-flowering heart that yields Her fragrance to the moon.

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.

EPITAPH IN OLD MODE

The leaves fall gently on the gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.s, 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.

THE MOON

(_To Maurice Baring_)