Lake Lyrics and Other Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

TITAN

 
Titan—he loves a breezy hill
    Away above us in the clouds,
Where sun and wind are never still,
    And fold it round with misty shrouds.

He loves the great world stretching out

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    Into dim sky; he loves the flowers
And trees, the brooks that laugh and shout,
    And often he will sit for hours

And gaze into the distant rim
    Of all things made of earth and air,
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That rounds the horizon vague and dim,
    Until his great, deep eyes do wear

A look of awe, in thoughts of One,
    Invisible, Eternal, Great,
Who built from out the burning sun,
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    This glorious world with all its state.

And through the clouds, that like a crown
    Of snow encircle his hill’s great head,
Sometimes the sun in peering down
    Will find him sleeping on his bed
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Of clover lawn, with blossoms that strew
    Themselves like love, and round him wave,
And all the night the winds blow through
    His dreams as through a cave.

Brawny, huge-limbed, in frame and mind

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    True type of man, in heart a boy,
Who loves the music of the wind,
    Who yet is innocent in joy.

Whose heart is not a cavern of doubt
    And dark foul hates, with passions rife;
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His dreams are all of flowers about,
    His life is part of nature’s life.

Though great in strength of manly form,
    His heart is truest tenderness,
Strong as the spirit of the storm,
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    Soft as the rain drops when they press,

With cooling lips the parchéd flowers
    That peer like young birds from their nest,
Mouths gaping for the much-loved showers,
    That cool and nourish Nature’s breast.
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And there I know he sits at dawn
    Fresh from his cave of sleep, with eyes
Clear as the sky above, the lawn
    Resplendent with a thousand dyes.

A line of red that lights the east
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    And widens over sky and sea
In purple and gold, and snowy fleeced,
     Where mountain peaks loom high and free.

And when pale May with tears the earth
    Has watered, and the rosier June
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To balm and bloom has given birth,
    And strung the world to rarest tune,

Then I shall hie to Titan’s hill
     Where far above among the clouds
The sun and wind are never still,
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    But fold it round with misty shrouds.

And there ’mid lawns grassy nooks,
    The great world stretching far below,
Here, far from men and care and books,
    Where only streams of nature flow.
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And he shall teach me, he who drinks
    Where nature’s fountains brimming run,
Who forged in thought the burning links
     That bind the great zones of the sun.

Whose nightly torches are the stars
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    That look with ever-trusting eyes
Across the midnight’s gloomy bars,
    And he will make me strong and wise.