Lake Lyrics and Other Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

MEDWAYOSH

 
A WORLD of dawn, where sky and water merge
    In far, dim vapors, mingling blue in blue,
    Where low-rimmed shores shimmer like gold shot through
Some misty fabric. Lost in dreams, I urge
With languid oar my skiff through sunny surge,
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    That rings its music round the rocks and sands,
    Passing to silence, where far lying lands
Loom blue and purpling from the morning’s verge.

I linger in dreams, and through my dreaming comes,
Like sound of suffering heard through battle drums, 
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    An anguished call of sad, heart-broken speech;
As if some wild lake spirit, long ago
Soul-wronged, through hundred years its wounded woe
    Moans out in vain across each wasted beach.