J. C. Squire

Sir John Collings Squire (2 April 1884 – 20 December 1958) was a British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the post-World War I period.

God heard the embattled nations sing and shout
"Gott strafe England" and "God save the King!"
God this, God that, and God the other thing –
"Good God!" said God, "I've got my work cut out!"

Quotes

• God heard the embattled nations sing and shout
  "Gott strafe England" and "God save the King!"
  God this, God that, and God the other thing –
  "Good God!" said God, "I've got my work cut out!"
  
  • On the outbreak of the First World War, from Epigrams (1916).

• It did not last: the devil, shouting "Ho.
  Let Einstein be," restored the status quo.
  • "In continuation of Pope on Newton" from Poems (1926); Squire is here extending upon the famous statement of Alexander Pope:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! — and all was light.

• As quoted in The Epigrammatists : A Selection from the Epigrammatic Literature of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern Times (1875) by Henry Philip Dodd, p. 329.

• The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and it has been widely diffused.
  • Selections from Modern Poets, Complete Edition (1927), p. vi.

• And I've swallowed, I grant, a beer of lot -
  But 'I'm not so think as you drunk I am.
  • Ballade of Soporific Absorption (1931).

• Now there once was a lass, and a very pretty lass,
  And she was an isotope's daughter
  • The Lass o' the Lab - A Modern Folksong.

• At last incapable of further harm,
  The lewd forefathers of the village sleep.
  • If Gray had had to write his Elegy in the Cemetery of Spoon River instead of in that of Stoke Poges.