Lake Lyrics and Other Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

ODE

TO THE LAKES

(In June.)

 
O MAGIC region of blue waters throbbing,
    O blown wave-garden, ’neath the north world’s span;
Wild paradise, girt in by crag-walls, robbing
    All earth of beauty since the world began;
I dream again your voice of beaches sobbing
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    And crave a boon more sweet that gift of man;—

Once more in the ripe heart of golden summer,
    To drift upon your blue pearled wimpling breast;
To watch God’s dawn, bud, bloom, a flushed incomer,
    To see him die with flames in thy hushed west; 
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To even know the entrance silence dumber,
    Because of heart awe-hushed and lips love-pressed.

To watch the dimmed day deepen into even,
    The flush of sunset melt in pallid gold;
While the pale planets blossom out in heaven; 
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    To feel the under silence trance and hold
The night’s great heartbeats; soul-washed, nature-shriven,
    To feel the mantle of silence fold on fold.

To know the horologe of nature timing
    The dawning or the golden heart of noon, 
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To hear in spirit magic bells set chiming
    On silver continents of the rising moon;
To read in sky, wave, wood, God’s poet rhyming
    In mystic rhythm nature’s eternal rune.

And so forget the sorrow and the glory, 
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    The passion and the pain that men call life;
To let the past go like a long-told story,
    The long-forgotten and the long-dead strife;
But just to drift here while the years grow hoary,
    Dead to earth’s living with all its anguish rife. 

And know no voice save that of beaches chanting,
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    No eye save June’s own glorious dome of blue;
And so be dead to all the strife and canting,
    The violence of souls that were untrue;
And only know one love, the mighty panting 
    Of your great heart that throbs your being through.
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