Lake Lyrics and Other Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

INVOCATION TO THE LAKES

 
I LOVE thee, lakes, and all thy glorious world,
    Blue, wrinkled, mist-encircled ’neath the sky.
And far unto thy realm of waves impearled
    My heart, bird-like, doth fly.

Thou art to me as love to lover sad,
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    As sun to flower, as husband unto wife;
I think of thee and all the hours are glad,
    And dead are pain and strife.

Thou comest to me as cooling draught to one,
    Hot parched and faint with unassuagéd thirst;
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My spirit tranced within thy air and sun
    Forgets the world is cursed.

Thou knowest nor hate, nor death, nor sin, nor pain,
    Nor woeful partings, bitterness and tears;
But only days that sleep to wake again,
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    Across thy golden years.

Within thy dreamy borders nought takes shape
    Of weird ambition, sorrow at the heart’s core:
Thou holdest only love of cape for cape,
    Of murmurous shore for shore.
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From sky and wave I drink thy nectared draught,
    From jewelled brim that stars of heaven span:
When, lo, ’tis love for God my heart hath quaffed,
    And sympathy for man.