Night
Home of the pure in heart and tranquil mind,
Temple of love's white silence, holy Night;
Greater than splendid thought or iron might,
Thy lofty peace unswept by any wind
Of human sorrow, leaves all care behind.
Uplifted to the zenith of thy height,
My world-worn spirit drinks thy calm delight,
And, chrysalis-like, lets slip its earthly rind.
The blinded feuds, base passions, and fierce guilt,
Vain pride and falseness that enslaved the day,
Here dwindle and fade with all that mocks and mars;
Where wisdom, awed, walks hushed with lips that pray.
'Neath this high minster, dim, invisible, built,
Vast, walled with deeps of space and roofed with stars.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
An October Evening
1 The woods are haggard and lonely,
2 The skies are hooded for snow,
3 The moon is cold in Heaven,
4 And the grasses are sere below.
5 The bearded swamps are breathing
6 A mist from meres afar,
7 And grimly the Great Bear circles
8 Under the pale Pole Star.
9 There is never a voice in Heaven,
10 Nor ever a sound on earth,
11 Where the spectres of winter are rising
12 Over the night's wan girth.
13 There is slumber and death in the silence,
14 There is hate in the winds so keen;
15 And the flash of the north's great sword-blade
16 Circles its cruel sheen.
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Snow
Down out of heaven,
Frost-kissed
And wind driven,
Flake upon flake,
Over forest and lake,
Cometh the snow.
Folding the forest,
Folding the farms,
In a mantle of white;
And the river’s great arms,
Kissed by the chill night
From clamor to rest,
Lie all white and shrouded
Upon the world’s breast.
Falling so slowly
Down from above,
So white, hushed, and holy,
Folding the city
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Canadian Folksong
The doors are shut, the windows fast;
Outside the gust is driving past,
Outside the shivering ivy clings,
While on the hob the kettle sings.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
The streams are hushed up where they flowed,
The ponds are frozen along the road,
The cattle are housed in shed and byre,
While singeth the kettle on the fire.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
The fisherman on the bay in his boat
Shivers and buttons up his coat;
The traveler stops at the tavern door,
And the kettle answers the chimney’s roar.
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily.
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
How one Winter Came in the Lake Region
1 For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
2 Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
3 The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
4 And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
5 In those grey, withered days.
6 Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
7 At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;
8 The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
9 The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
10 And hushed its caverns loud.
11 Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
12 Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,
13 Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute
14 Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root
15 The tree-toad trilled his dream.
16 From day to day still hushed the season's mood,
17 The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Winter Lakes
Out in a world of death far to the northward lying,
Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day;
Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets dying,
Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away.
Never a bud of spring, never a laugh of summer,
Never a dream of love, never a song of bird;
But only the silence and white, the shores that grow chiller and dumber,
Wherever the ice winds sob, and the griefs of winter are heard.
Crags that are black and wet out of the grey lake looming,
Under the sunset's flush and the pallid, faint glimmer of dawn;
Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are booming
Thunders of wintry woe over the spaces wan.
Lands that loom like spectres, whited regions of winter,
Wastes of desolate woods, deserts of water and shore;
A world of winter and death, within these regions who enter,
Lost to summer and life, go to return no more.
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Dread Voyage
1 Trim the sails the weird stars under—
2 Past the iron hail and thunder,
3 Past the mystery and the wonder,
4 Sails our fated bark;
5 Past the myriad voices hailing,
6 Past the moaning and the wailing,
7 The far voices failing, failing,
8 Drive we to the dark.
9 Past the headlands grim and sombre,
10 Past the shores of mist and slumber,
11 Leagues on leagues no man may number,
12 Soundings none can mark;
13 While the olden voices calling,
14 One by one behind are falling;
15 Into silence dread, appalling,
16 Drift we to the dark.
17 Far behind, the sad eyes yearning,
18 Hands that wring for our returning,
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Last Prayer
MASTER of life, the day is done;
My sun of life is sinking low;
I watch the hours slip one by one
And hark the night-wind and the snow.
And must Thou shut the morning out,
And dim the eye that loved to see;
Silence the melody and rout,
And seal the joys of earth for me?
And must Thou banish all the hope,
The large horizon's eagle-swim,
The splendour of the far-off slope
That ran about the world's great rim,
That rose with morning's crimson rays
And grew to noonday's gloried dome,
Melting to even's purple haze
When all the hopes of earth went home?
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
To a Robin in November
Sweet, sweet and the soft listening heaven reels
In one blue ecstasy above thy song
In the red heart of all the opening year,
In the hushed murmur of low dreaming fields
Hung under heaven ’twixt dim blue and blue;
Where the young Summer, purpled and pearled in dew,
Mirrors herself in June, and knows no wrong.
Sweet, sweet, throwing thy lack of fear
Back to the heart of God, till heaven feels
The throbbing of earth’s music through and through.
Dreaming in song,—great pulsing-hearted hills,
Cradling the dawn in mists and purple veils
Of vapors, over pearls of lakes and brooks
Girdled about the neck of half the world,
When the red birth of the young dreaming June
Kisses the lands with gales, and murmurs, and trills
Of melody, lips that blossom with tales
Of music and color and form and beauty of looks
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Stella Flammarum: An Ode to Halley's Comet
1 Strange wanderer out of the deeps,
2 Whence, journeying, come you?
3 From what far, unsunned sleeps
4 Did fate foredoom you,
5 Returning for ever again
6 Through the surgings of man,
7 A flaming, awesome portent of dread
8 Down the centuries' span?
9 Riddle! from the dark unwrung
10 By all earth's sages;--
11 God's fiery torch from His hand outflung,
12 To flame through the ages:
13 Thou Satan of planets eterne,
14 'Mid angry path,
15 Chained, in circlings vast, to burn
16 Out ancient wrath.
17 By what dread hand first loosed
18 From fires eternal?
[...] Read more
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!