Lake Lyrics and Other Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

A DAY OF MISTS

 
THE crags and the low shores kneel
Like ghosts, in the fogs that reel,
And glide, and shiver, and feel
    For the shores with their shadowy hands.
Earth and heaven are grey;
5
The worlds of waters are grey,
And out in the fog-haunted day
    A spectre—the lighthouse—stands.

And far from some caverned shore,
There cometh the distant roar
10
    Of the lake-surf’s beat and din;
While wraith-like over the land,
From low white isles of sand
Of far off Michigan,
    The fogs come drifting in.
15

I stand in the shrouded day,
But my heart is far away
With a grave in a lonely bay,
    Where the crags like eaglets cling;
And under the drive and drift
20
Of the vapors that sometime lift,
And loom, and lower, and shift,
    The lake-birds scream and sing.