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Antinomies On A Railway Station

by Sir John Collings Squire

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 unanchored wraith,

And rails that shine and stones that stream

Unsubstantial as a dream?

What sudden door has opened so,

What hand has passed, that I should know

This moving vision not a trance

That melts the globe of circumstance,

This sight that marks not least or most

And makes a stone a passing 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 space the things that I had prized:

The race of life, the glittering show?

Is it that now a year has passed

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 partitioning fabric thin,

And tears away the darkening pall

Cast by the bright phenomenal,

And clears the obscur'd 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 entranc'd 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 grass 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 grass 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.