Frederick George Scott

COLLECTED POEMS

 

The Unnamed Lake

It sleeps among the thousand hills
    Where no man ever trod,
And only nature’s music fills
    The silences of God.

Great mountains tower above its shore,
5
    Green rushes fringe its brim,
And o’er its breast for evermore
    The wanton breezes skim.

Dark clouds that intercept the sun
    Go there in Spring to weep,
10
And there, when Autumn days are done,
    White mists lie down to sleep.

Sunrise and sunset crown with gold
    The peaks of ageless stone,
Where winds have thundered from of old
15
    And storms have set their throne.

No echoes of the world afar
    Disturb it night or day,
But sun and shadow, moon and star
    Pass and repass for aye.
20

’Twas in the grey of early dawn
    When first the lake we spied,
And fragments of a cloud were drawn
    Half down the mountain side.

Along the shore a heron flew,
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    And from a speck on high
That hovered in the deepening blue,
    We heard the fish-hawk’s cry. [Page 8]

Among the cloud-capt solitudes,
    No sound the silence broke,
30
Save when, in whispers down the woods,
    The guardian mountains spoke.

Through tangled brush and dewy brake,
     Returning whence we came,
We passed in silence, and the lake
35
    We left without a name. [Page 9]