Sagas of Vaster Britain: Poems of the Race, the Empire and the Divinity of Man

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

THE HOME OF SONG

 
HERE in northern solitudes,
Sounding shorelands, glooming woods,

Where the pines their dreams rehearse,
Is the home of haunting verse.

Dreams of beauty here inspire
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All the summer’s radiant fire

In the gleam of leaf and bird,
Ere the autumn’s voice is heard

Fluting soft her woodland tune
Down the golden afternoon.
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Where the seaward ships go down,
By some ancient Norman town;

Where the northern marshes lie,
Golden under azure sky;

Where the northern woodland glooms,

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Luminous in leafy rooms,

With its ancient, sunlit wine,
Under smoke of dusky pine:

Here the soul of silence broods
Under haunted solitudes;

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Here that spirit rare and pure,
Of the muses who endure,

Dreams with Wisdom’s quiet eye,
While the phantom years go by.

Where far sunlands shine and drowse,
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And great leafy, golden boughs,

Swaying, pendulous, within
A sleep diaphanous and thin,

Answer to the drowsy mind
And loiterings of the thoughtful wind:
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Here in seasons lone and long
The spirit rare of northern song

Keeps in dreams remote, apart,
The cadences of her own heart.