The Dread Voyage Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

MORNING ON THE SHORE

 
THE lake is blue with morning; and the sky
      Sweet, clear, and burnished as an orient pearl.
      High in its vastness, scream and skim and whirl
White gull-flocks where the gleaming beaches die
Into dim distance, where great marshes lie.
5
      Far in ashore the woods are warm with dreams,
      The dew-wet road in ruddy sunlight gleams,
The sweet, cool earth, the clear blue heaven on high.

Across the morn a carolling school-boy goes,
Filling the world with youth to heaven’s stair;
10
      Some chattering squirrel answers from his tree;
But down beyond the headland, where ice-floes
Are great in winter, pleading in mute prayer,
      A dead, drowned face stares up immutably.