The Poetry Corner

Airship Over Suburb

By John Collings Squire, Sir

A smooth blue sky with puffed motionless clouds. Standing over the plain of red roofs and bushy trees The bright coloured shell of the large enamelled sky. Out of the distance pointing, a cut dark shape That moves this way at leisure, then hesitates and turns: And its darkness suddenly dies as it turns and shows A gleaming silver, white against even the whitest cloud. Across the blue and the low small clouds it moves Level, with a floating cloud-like motion of its own, Peaceful, sunny and slow, a thing of summer itself, Above the basking earth, travelling the clouds and the sky.