Poems: Old and New

by Frederick George Scott

 

OUT OF THE STORM.

 
THE huge winds gather on the midnight lake,
   Shaggy with rain and loud with foam-white feet,
   Then bound through miles of darkness till they meet
The harboured ships and city’s squares, and wake
From steeples, domes and houses sounds that take
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   A human speech, the storm’s mad course to greet;
   And nightmare voices through the rain and sleet
Pass shrieking, till the town’s rock-sinews shake.

Howl, winds, around us in this silent room!
   Wild lake, with thunders beat thy prison bars!
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      A brother’s life is ebbing fast away,
And, mounting on your music through the gloom,
   A pure soul mingles with the morning stars,
      And with them melts into the blaze of day.

St. Luke’s Hospital,
      Duluth, May 17, 1894. [Page 152]