The Sky Watcher

          Black rolls the phantom chimney-smoke

           Beneath the wintry moon;

            For miles on miles, by sound unbroke,

            The world lies wrapt in its ermine cloak,

             And the night's icy swoon

            Sways earthward in great brimming wells

            Of luminous, frosty particles.

            Far up the roadway, drifted deep,

             Where frost-etched fences gleam;

           Beneath the sky's wan, shimmering sleep

           My solitary way I keep

           Across the world's white dream;

            The only living moving thing

           In all this mighty slumbering.

           Up in the eastern range of hill,

           The thin wood spectrally

            Stirs in its sleep and then is still

           (Like querulous age) at the wind's will.

          My shadow doggedly

           Follows my footsteps where I go,

           A grotesque giant on the snow.

            Out where the river's arms are wound,

         And icy sedges cling,

            There comes to me as in a swound

           A far-off clear, thin, vibrant sound,--

           The distant hammering

          Of frost-elves as they come and go,

            Forging, in silver chains, his woe.

          I stand upon the hill's bleak crest

          And note the far night world:

          The mighty lake whose passionate breast,

           Manacled into arctic rest,

           In shrouded sleep is furled:

            The steely heavens whose wondrous host

           Wheel white from flaming coast to coast.

            Then down the night's dim luminous ways,

            Me seems they come once more,

           Those great star-watchers of old days

            The lonely, calm-ones, whose still gaze,

           On old-time, orient shore,

           Dreamed in the wheeling sons of light,

           The awful secrets of earth's night.

           They come, those lofty ones of old,

            And take me by the hand,

            And call me brother; ages rolled

           Are but a smoke-mist; kindred-souled,

          They lift me to their band;

           Like lights that from pale starbeams shine,

          Their clear eyes look with peace on mine.

            In language of no common kind

          These watchers speak to me;

           Their thoughts the depths of heaven find

           Like plummets true. It were a kind

           Of immortality

           To spend with them one holy hour,

           And know their love and grasp their power.

          And wrapt around with glad content,

         I learn with soul serene,

          Caught from the beauty that is blent

           In earth, the heaven's luminous tent,

         The frost-lit dreams between,

          And something holier out of sight,

            Glad visions of the infinite.

           Then backward past the sere hill's breast,

           The spectral moaning wood,

           With great peace brooding in my breast,

           I turn me toward the common rest

          Of earth's worn brotherhood;

           But as I pass, a sacred sign,

            Each lays his holy lips on mine:--

            Gives me the golden chrism of song,

          Tips my hushed heart with fire;

           Till high in heaven I hear that throng

           Who march in mystic paths along,

            Great Pleiades, The Lyre,

            The Te-Deum of the ages swell,

            To earth-tuned ear inaudible.
--William Wilfred Campbell