Sir John Collings Squire was a British writer, most notable as editor of the London Mercury, a major literary magazine between the world wars. He antagonised several eminent authors, but attracted a coterie that was dubbed the Squirearchy. He was also a poet and historian, who captained a famous literary cricket-team called the Invalids. Wikipedia
“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.
On the outbreak of the First World War, from Epigrams (1916).
“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.
“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.
“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).
“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.
