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Processes Of Thought

by Sir John Collings Squire

I find my mind as it were a deep water.

Sometimes I play with a thought and hammer and bend it,

Till tired and displeased with that I toss it away,

Or absently let it slip to the yawning water:

And down it sinks, forgotten for many a day.

But a time comes when tide or tempest washes it

High on the beach, and I find that shape of mine,

Or I haul it out from the depths on some casual rope,

Or, passing over that spot in quiet shine,

I see, where my boat's shadow makes deep the water,

A patch of colour, far down, from the bottom apart,

A wavering sign like the gleam from an ancient anchor,

Brown fixing and fleeting flakes; and I feel my heart

Wake to a strange excitement; so that I stop,

Put up my paddles and dredge with a careful net:

And I catch it, and see it stir, and feel its weight,

And pull till it nears and breaks from the water wet.

And my eyes dwell on that old abandoned thing

Recovered by chance. For the shape I had found so dull

Has crusted and changed in secrecy and silence,

And its surface shines like a pearl, most beautiful.

In bed I lie, and my thoughts come filing by,

All forms and faces, cheerful, serene and sad:

Some clear, some mistily showing and fragmentary,

Some altered in size or shape since last they were seen.

But O last, you group of merry ones!

Lord knows when I saw you before, but I met you once,

The whole collection of you, impudent-eyed;

And now, rosy and grinning, with linked arms

You go swingingly by, turning your faces to mine,

I laugh aloud; you bad lots; you are a secret,

That nobody else knows.

And you it was that made me break the procession

(While memory gave me still the power of summons),

And call up all I could of a half-hour's thoughts

To parade them across this proscenium of my skull

In the order they came in, more carefully recognising

The old, and remarking which have developed or changed.

And as for you, you rogues, I am almost certain

There are one or two more of you now than once there were.

* * * * *

Good-bye! Good-bye! Dance through the dark door

In to the life that somewhere else you lead.

And one day I shall all unwittingly call

Some word you know as a signal, or you'll see

Someone else coming my way; you'll suddenly follow,

And you'll appear again, quite possibly

Bringing new friends, who are sure to be just as bad.

III

Into the pits of my heart and brain,

My eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers, like five gardeners

Are shovelling sights, sounds, odours, savours, contacts,

While I, their master, casually nod, and most times

Stand idly by, looking at something else,

Forgetting that the work is going on

And only fully conscious of my servants

When something they move is consonant with my mood

And draws my notice; or some other thing,

More strange than usual or stronger in its impact,

Makes them exclaim and call to bid me watch.

And then in a ground of more than our dimensions

Those quietly flowing cascades of things are hid.

They are buried in those illimitable fields,

And ever as they are swallowed by the earth

The steady hours passing in procession

Walk over them and trample them well down

Out of sight, levelling all the soil.

Then some time my returning feet uncover them

(My slaves are all agog with recognition)

Or else perhaps I come and idly dig

To see what thing I can find, and out there comes

Some old form buried twenty years ago

Now called a memory.

Or marking well the place where one was put

Find it and more, drawn thither under the ground,

Tangled with others as flower-roots with roots

Into a new festoon, or one old image,

Wearing others like gems. And that's creation.