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Sagas
of Vaster Britain: Poems of the Race, the Empire and
the Divinity of Man
by
William Wilfred Campbell
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HOW
ONE WINTER CAME IN THE LAKE REGION
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FOR
weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
Clothed in the shadow
of a smoky haze;
The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
In those grey, withered
days.
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Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
At night the moon would
nestle in a cloud;
The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
And hushed its caverns
loud.
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Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
Save that from blackened
tree a jay would scream,
Or far in swamps the lizard’s lonesome lute
Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarled root
The tree-toad trilled
his dream.
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From day to day still hushed the season’s
mood,
The streams stayed in
their runnels shrunk and dry;
Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,
And all the world, with ominous silence, stood
In weird expectancy:
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When one strange night the sun like blood went
down,
Flooding the heavens in
a ruddy hue;
Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and
brown,
Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,
But never a wind-breath
blew.
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That night I felt the winter in my veins,
A joyous tremor of the
icy glow;
And woke to hear the North’s wild vibrant
strains,
While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,
Fast fell the driving
snow.
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