J.C. Squire

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Rivers

Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,

Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,

With bands of reeds like thronged green swords

   Guarding the mirrored sky;

And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills

To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,

And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,

   Trout flit or lie.

I know these rivers that peacefully glide

Past old towers and shaven gardens,

Where mottled walls rise from the water

   And mills all streaked with flour;

And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,

That flow with a stately tidal motion

Towards their destined estuaries

   Full of the pride of power;

Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,

Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches,

Clyde, dying at sunset westward

   In a sea as red as blood;

Rhine and his hills in close procession,

Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling,

And Isar, son of the Alpine snows,

   A furious turquoise flood.

All these I have known, and with slow eyes

I have walked on their shores and watched them,

And softened to their beauty and loved them

   Wherever my feet have been;

And a hundred others also

Whose names long since grew into me,

That, dreaming in light or darkness,

   I have seen, though I have not seen.

Those rivers of thought: cold Ebro,

The blue racing Guadiana,

Passing white houses, high-balconied

   That ache in the sun-baked land,

Congo, and Nile and Colorado,

Niger, Indus, Zambesi,

And the Yellow River, and the Oxus,

   And the river that dies in sand.

What splendours are theirs, what continents

What tribes of men, what basking plains,

Forests and lion-hided deserts,

   Marshes, ravines and falls:

All hues and shapes and tempers

Wandering they take as they wander

From those far springs that endlessly

   The far sea calls.

O in reverie I know the Volga

That turns his back upon Europe,

And the two great cities on his banks,

   Novgorod and Astrakhan;

Where the world is a few soft colours,

And under the dove-like evening

The boatmen chant ancient songs,

   The tenderest known to man.

And the holy river Ganges,

His fretted cities veiled in moonlight,

Arches and buttresses silver-shadowy

   In the high moon,

And palms grouped in the moonlight

And fanes girdled with cypresses,

Their domes of marble softly shining

   To the high silver moon.

And that aged Brahmapootra

Who beyond the white Himalayas

Passes many a lamassery

   On rocks forlorn and frore,

A block of gaunt grey stone walls

With rows of little barred windows,

Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silk

   Are hidden for evermore . . .

But O that great river, the Amazon,

I have sailed up its gulf with eyelids closed,

And the yellow waters tumbled round,

   And all was rimmed with sky,

Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads,

And the lines of green grew higher

And I breathed deep, and there above me

   The forest wall stood high.

Those forest walls of the Amazon

Are level under the blazing blue

And yield no sound but the whistles and shrieks

   Of the swarming bright macaws;

And under their lowest drooping boughs

Mud-banks torpidly bubble,

And the water drifts, and logs in the water

   Drift and twist and pause.

And everywhere, tacitly joining,

Float noiseless tributaries,

Tall avenues paved with water:

   And as I silently fly

The vegetation like a painted scene,

Spars and spikes and monstrous fans

And ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing,

   Evenly passes by.

And stealthier stagnant channels

Under low niches of drooping leaves

Coil into deep recesses:

   And there have I entered, there

To heavy, hot, dense, dim places

Where creepers climb and sweat and climb,

And the drip and splash of oozing water

   Loads the stifling air.

Rotting scrofulous steaming trunks,

Great horned emerald beetles crawling,

Ants and huge slow butterflies

   That had strayed and lost the sun;

Ah, sick I have swooned as the air thickened

To a pallid brown ecliptic glow,

And on the forest, fallen with languor,

   Thunder had begun.

Thunder in the dun dusk, thunder

Rolling and battering and cracking,

The caverns shudder with a terrible glare

   Again and again and again,

Till the land bows in the darkness,

Utterly lost and defenceless,

Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed

   By the crashing rods of rain.

And then in the forests of the Amazon,

When the rain has ended, the silence come,

What dark luxuriance unfolds

   From behind the night's drawn bars:

The wreathing odours of a thousand trees

And the flowers' faint gleaming presences,

And over the clearings and the still waters

   Soft indigo and hanging stars.

   *       *       *       *

O many and many are rivers,

And beautiful are all rivers,

And lovely is water everywhere

   That leaps or glides or stays;

Yet by starlight, moonlight, or sunlight,

Long, long though they look, these wandering eyes,

Even on the fairest waters of dream,

   Never untroubled gaze.

For whatever stream I stand by,

And whatever river I dream of,

There is something still in the back of my mind

   From very far away;

There is something I saw and see not,

A country full of rivers

That stirs my heart and speaks to me

   More sure, more dear than they.

And always I ask and wonder

(Though often I do not know it):

Why does this water not smell like water?

   Where is the moss that grew

Wet and dry on the slabs of granite

And the round stones in clear brown water?

-- And a pale film rises before them

   Of the rivers that first I knew.

Though famous are the rivers of the great world,

Though my heart from those alien waters drinks

Delight however pure from their loveliness,

   And awe however deep,

Would I wish for a moment the miracle,

That those waters should come to Chagford,

Or gather and swell in Tavy Cleave

   Where the stones cling to the steep?

No, even were they Ganges and Amazon

In all their great might and majesty,

League upon league of wonders,

   I would lose them all, and more,

For a little chiming of small bells,

A twisting flash in the granite,

The tiny throng of a pixie waterfall

   That lives by Vixen Tor.

Those rivers in that lost country,

They were brown as a clear brown bead is,

Or red with the earth that rain washed down,

   Or white with china-clay;

And some tossed foaming over boulders,

And some curved mild and tranquil,

In wooded vales securely set

   Under the fond warm day.

Okement and Erme and Avon,

Exe and his ruffled shallows,

I could cry as I think of these rivers

   That knew my morning dreams;

The weir by Tavistock at evening

When the circling woods were purple,

And the Lowman in spring with the lent-lilies,

   And the little moorland streams.

For many a hillside streamlet

There falls with a broken tinkle,

Falling and dying, falling and dying,

   In little cascades and pools,

Where the world is furze and heather

And flashing plovers and fixed larks,

And an empty sky, whitish blue,

   That small world rules.

There, there, where the high waste bog-lands

And the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys,

The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pastures

   Those travelling musics fill,

There is my lost Abana,

And there is my nameless Pharquar

That mixed with my heart when I was a boy,

   And time stood still.

And I say I will go there and die there:

But I do not go there, and sometimes

I think that the train could not carry me there,

   And it's possible, maybe,

That it's farther than Asia or Africa,

Or any voyager's harbour,

Farther, farther, beyond recall. . . .

   O even in memory!

Epitaph in Old Mode

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 tres, the willow trees

Breathe sighs above 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.

Sonnet

There was an Indian, who had known no change,

   Who strayed content along a sunlit beach

Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange

   Commingled noise: looked up; and gasped for speech.

For in the bay, where nothing was before,

   Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,

With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,

   And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.

And he, in fear, this naked man alone,

   His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,

His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,

And stared, and saw, and did not understand,

   Columbus's doom-burdened caravels

      Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land.

The Birds

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;

Building ships, temples, multiform abodes.

How, for his body's appetities, his toils

Have conquered all earth's products, all her soils;

And in what thousand thousand shapes of art

He has tried to find a language for his heart!

Never at rest, never content or tired:

Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired,

Most grandly piling and piling into the air

Stones that will topple or arch he knows not where.

And yet did I, this spring, think it more strange,

More grand, more full of awe, than all that change,

And lovely and sweet and touching unto tears,

That through man's chronicled and unchronicled years,

And even into that unguessable beyond

The water-hen has nested by a pond,

Weaving dry flags into a beaten floor,

The one sure product of her only lore.

Low on a ledge above the shadowed water

Then, when she heard no men, so nature taught her,

Plashing around with busy scarlet bill

She build that nest, her nest, and builds it still.

O let your strong imagination turn

The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn,

And then unbuild, and seven Troys below

Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow,

Till all have passed, and none has yet been there;

Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air;

Beyond our myriad changing generations

Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations.

A million years before Atlantis was

Our lark spring from some hollow in the grass,

Some old soft hoof-print in a tussock's shade;

And the wood-pigeon's smooth snow-white eggs were laid,

High, amid green pines' sunset-coloured shafts,

And rooks their villages of twiggy rafts

Set on the tops of elms, where elms grew then,

And still the thumbling tit and perky wren

Popped through the tiny doors of cosy balls

And the blackbird lined with moss his high-built walls;

A round mud cottage held the thrush's young,

And straws from the untidy sparrow's hung.

And, skimming forktailed in the eveining air,

When man first was were not the martens there?

Did not those birds some human shelter drave,

And stow beneath the cornice of his cave

Their dry tight cups of clay? And from each door

Peeped on a morning wiseheads three or four.

Yes, daw and owl, curlew and crested hern,

Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern,

Chaffinch and greenfinch, warbler, stonechat, ruff,

Pied wagtail, robin, fly-catcher and chough,

Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk, and jay,

Built, those far ages gone, in this year's way.

And the first man who walked the cliffs of Rome,

As I this year, looked down and saw the same

Blotches of rusty red on ledge and cleft

With grey-green spots on them, while right and left

A dizzying tangle of gulls were floating and flying,

Wheeling and crossing and darting, crying and crying,

Circling and crying, over and over and over,

Crying with swoop and hover and fall and recover.

And below on a rock against the great sea fretted,

Pipe-necked and stationary and silhouetted,

Cormorants stood in a wide, black, equal row

Above the nests and long blue eggs we know.

O delicate chain over all the ages stretched,

O dumb tradition from what far darkness fetched:

Each little architect with its one design

Perpetual, fixed and right in stuff and line,

Each little ministrant who knows one thing,

One learnèd rite to celebrate the spring,

Whtatever alters else on sea or shore,

These are unchanging: man must still explore.

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