<SPAN name="XXIV"></SPAN>
<h2>XXIV</h2>
<h2><b>MR. J.C. SQUIRE</b></h2>
<br/>
<p>It would not have been easy a few years ago to foresee the
achievement
of Mr. Squire as a poet. He laboured under the disadvantage of being
also a wit. It used to be said of Ibsen that a Pegasus had once been
shot under him, and one was alarmed lest the reverse of this was about
to happen to Mr. Squire, and lest a writer who began in the gaiety of
the comic spirit should end soberly astride Pegasus. When, in <i>Tricks
of
the Trade</i>, he announced that he was going to write no more
parodies,
one had a depressed feeling that he was about to give up to poetry what
was meant for mankind. Yet, on reading Mr. Squire's collected poems in
<i>Poems: First Series</i>, it is difficult not to admit that it was to
write
serious verse even more than parody and political epigram that he was
born.</p>
<p>He has arranged the poems in the book in the order of their
composition,
so that we can follow the development of his powers and see him, as it
were, learning to fly. To read him is again and again to be reminded of
Donne. Like Donne, he is largely self-occupied, examining the horrors
of
his own soul, overburdened at times with thought, an intellect at odds
with the spirit. Like Donne, he will have none of the merely poetic,
either in music or in imagery. He beats out a music of his own and he
beats out an imagery of his own. In his early work, this sometimes
resulted in his poems being unable to rise far from the ground. They
seemed to be labouring on unaccustomed wings towards the ether. What
other living poet has ever given a poem such a title as <i>Antinomies
on
a Railway Station?</i> What other has examined himself with the same
X-rays
sort of realism as Mr. Squire has done in <i>The Mind of Man?</i> The
latter, like many of Mr. Squire's poems, is an expression of fastidious
disgust with life. The early Mr. Squire was a master of disgust, and we
see the same mood dominant even in the <i>Ode: In a Restaurant</i>,
where the
poet suddenly breaks out:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Soul! This life is very strange,<br/>
</span><span>And circumstances very foul<br/>
</span><span>Attend the belly's stormy howl.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The ode, however, is not merely, or even primarily, an expression of
disgust. Here, too, we see Mr. Squire's passion for romance and energy.
Here, too, we see him as a fisherman of strange imagery, as when he
describes the sounds of the restaurant band as they float in upon him
from another room and die again:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Like keen-drawn threads of ink dropped into a
glass<br/>
</span><span>Of water, which curl and relax and soften and pass.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The <i>Ode: In a Restaurant</i> is perhaps the summit of Mr.
Squire's writing
as a poet at odds with himself, a poet who floats above the obscene and
dull realities of every day, "like a draggled seagull over dreary flats
of mud." He has already escaped into bluer levels in the poem, <i>On a
friend Recently Dead</i>, written in the same or the following year.
Here
he ceases to be a poet floating and bumping against a ceiling. He is
now
ranging the heaven of the emancipated poets. Even when he writes of the
common and prosaic things he now charges them with significance for the
emotions. He is no longer a satirist and philosopher, but a lover. How
well he conjures up the picture of the room in which his friend used to
sit and talk:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Capricious friend!<br/>
</span><span>Here in this room, not long before the end,<br/>
</span><span>Here in this very room six months ago<br/>
</span><span>You poised your foot and joked and chuckled so.<br/>
</span><span>Beyond the window shook the ash-tree bough,<br/>
</span><span>You saw books, pictures, as I see them now.<br/>
</span><span>The sofa then was blue, the telephone<br/>
</span><span>Listened upon the desk and softly shone<br/>
</span><span>Even as now the fire-irons in the grate,<br/>
</span><span>And the little brass pendulum swung, a seal of fate<br/>
</span><span>Stamping the minutes; and the curtains on window and door<br/>
</span><span>Just moved in the air; and on the dark boards of the floor<br/>
</span><span>These same discreetly-coloured rugs were lying ...<br/>
</span><span>And then you never had a thought of dying.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>How much richer, too, by this time Mr. Squire's imagery has become!
His
observation is both exact and imaginative when he notes how—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">the frail ash-tree hisses<br/>
</span><span>With a soft sharpness like a fall of mounded grain.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>Elsewhere in the same poem Mr. Squire has given us a fine new image
of
the brevity of man's life:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>And I, I see myself as one of a heap of
stones,<br/>
</span><span>Wetted a moment to life as the flying wave goes over.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>It was not, however, till <i>The Lily of Malud</i> appeared that
readers of
poetry in general realized that Mr. Squire was a poet of the
imagination
even more than of the intellect. This is a flower that has blossomed
out
of the vast swamps of the anthropologists. It is the song of the ritual
of initiation. Mr. Squire's power in the sphere both of the grotesque
and of lovely imagery is revealed in the triumphant close of this
poem:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>And the surly thick-lipped men, as they sit
about their huts<br/>
</span><span>Making drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then,<br/>
</span><span>Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled
skin,<br/>
</span><span>Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony,<br/>
</span><span>Chip and grunt and do not see.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">But each mother, silently,<br/>
</span><span>Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut,<br/>
</span><span>For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air,<br/>
</span><span>A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowed<br/>
</span><span>With hollow shining eyes, as the night-fire dies.<br/>
</span><span>And stare softly at the ember, and try to remember<br/>
</span><span>Something sorrowful and far, something sweet and vaguely
seen<br/>
</span><span>Like an early evening star when the sky is pale green:<br/>
</span><span>A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour,<br/>
</span><span>Or a ghost like a flower, or a flower like a queen:<br/>
</span><span>Something holy in the past that came and did not last,<br/>
</span><span>But she knows not what it was.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>It is easy to see in the last lines that Mr. Squire has escaped
finally
from the idealist's disgust to the idealist's exaltation. He has
learned
to express the beautiful mystery of life and he is no longer haunted in
his nerves by the ugliness of circumstances. Not that he has shut
himself up in an enchanted world: he still remains a poet of this
agonizing earth. In <i>The Stronghold</i> he summons up a vision of
"easeful
death," only to turn aside from it as Christian turned aside from the
temptations on his way:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>But, O, if you find that castle,<br/>
</span><span>Draw back your foot from the gateway,<br/>
</span><span>Let not its peace invite you,<br/>
</span><span>Let not its offerings tempt you,<br/>
</span><span>For faded and decayed like a garment,<br/>
</span><span>Love to a dust will have fallen,<br/>
</span><span>And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,<br/>
</span><span>And hope will have gone with pain;<br/>
</span><span>And of all the throbbing heart's high courage<br/>
</span><span>Nothing will remain.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>And these later poems are not only nobler in passion than the early
introspective work; they are also more moving. Few of the "in memoriam"
poems of the war touch the heart as does that poem, <i>To a Bulldog</i>,
with
its moving close:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>And though you run expectant as you always do<br/>
</span><span class="i2">To the uniforms we meet,<br/>
</span><span>You will never find Willy among all the soldiers<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Even in the longest street.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Nor in any crowd: yet, strange and bitter
thought,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Even now were the old words said,<br/>
</span><span>If I tried the old trick, and said "Where's Willy?"<br/>
</span><span class="i2">You would quiver and lift your head.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>And your brown eyes would look to ask if I
was serious,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">And wait for the word to spring.<br/>
</span><span>Sleep undisturbed: I shan't say that again,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">You innocent old thing.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">While you lie there asleep on the floor;<br/>
</span><span>For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">And he won't be coming here any more.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>Of the new poems in the book, one of the most beautiful is <i>August
Moon</i>. The last verses provide an excellent example of Mr. Squire's
gift
both as a painter of things and a creator of atmosphere:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>A golden half-moon in the sky, and broken
gold in the water.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>In the water, tranquilly severing, joining,
gold:<br/>
</span><span>Three or four little plates of gold on the river:<br/>
</span><span>A little motion of gold between the dark images<br/>
</span><span>Of two tall posts that stand in the grey water.<br/>
</span><span>A woman's laugh and children going home.<br/>
</span><span>A whispering couple, leaning over the railings,<br/>
</span><span>And somewhere, a little splash as a dog goes in.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>I have always known all this, it has always
been,<br/>
</span><span>There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Listen! Behind the twilight a deep, low sound<br/>
</span><span>Like the constant shutting of very distant doors.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Doors that are letting people over there<br/>
</span><span>Out to some other place beyond the end of the sky.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The contrast between the beauty of the stillness of the moonlit
world
and the insane intrusion of the war into it has not, I think, been
suggested so expressively in any other poem.</p>
<p>Now that these poems have been collected into a single volume it is
possible to measure the author's stature. His book will, I believe,
come
as a revelation to the majority of readers. A poet of original music,
of an original mind, of an original imagination, Mr. Squire has now
taken a secure place among the men of genius of to-day. <i>Poems:
First
Series</i>, is literary treasure so novel and so abundant that I can no
longer regret, as I once did, that Mr. Squire has said farewell to the
brilliant lighter-hearted moods of <i>Steps to Parnassus</i> and <i>Tricks
of
the Trade.</i> He has brought us gifts better even than those.</p>
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