More Public Domain Poems of Canadian Poet William Wilfred Campbell

Winter Lakes, The

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.

Moons that glimmer above, waters that lie white under,

Miles and miles of lake far out under the night;

Foaming crests of waves, surfs that shoreward thunder,

Shadowy shapes that flee, haunting the spaces white.

Lonely hidden bays, moon-lit, ice-rimmed, winding,

Fringed by forests and crags, haunted by shadowy shores;

Hushed from the outward strife, where the mighty surf is grinding

Death and hate on the rocks, as sandward and landward it roars.

The Mother

IT was April, blossoming spring,

They buried me, when the birds did sing;

Earth, in clammy wedging earth,

They banked my bed with a black, damp girth.

Under the damp and under the mould,

I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold.

Out from the red beams, slanting and bright,

I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream,

And yet I kenned all things that seem.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream,

But you cannot bury a red sunbeam.

For though in the under-grave's doom-night

I lay all silent and stark and white,

Yet over my head I seemed to know

The murmurous moods of wind and snow,

The snows that wasted, the winds that blew,

The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew

The water-ghosts up from lakes below,

And the little flower-souls in earth that grow.

Under earth, in the grave's stark night,

I felt the stars and the moon's pale light.

I felt the winds of ocean and land

That whispered the blossoms soft and bland.

Though they had buried me dark and low,

My soul with the season's seemed to grow.

From throes of pain they buried me low,

For death had finished a mother's woe.

But under the sod, in the grave's dread doom,

I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom.

I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest

Was broken in wailings on my dead breast.

I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling;

Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring!

When the winds are soft and the blossoms are red

She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed.

I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night,

And then I rose in my grave-clothes white.

I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed

To the world of sorrowing overhead.

Men would have called me a thing of harm,

But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm.

I felt my breasts swell under my shroud;

No star shone white, no winds were loud;

But I stole me past the graveyard wall,

For the voice of my baby seemed to call;

And I kenned me a voice, though my lips were dumb:

Hush, baby, hush! for mother is come.

I passed the streets to my husband's home;

The chamber stairs in a dream I clomb;

I heard the sound of each sleeper's breath,

Light waves that break on the shores of death.

I listened a space at my chamber door,

Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor.

My babe was asleep on a stranger's arm,

'O baby, my baby, the grave is so warm,

'Though dark and so deep, for mother is there!

O come with me from the pain and care!

'O come with me from the anguish of earth,

Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth,

'Where the pillow is soft and the rest is long,

And mother will croon you a slumber-song–

'A slumber-song that will charm your eyes

To a sleep that never in earth-song lies!

'The loves of earth your being can spare,

But never the grave, for mother is there.'

I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast,

And stole me back to my long, long rest.

And here I lie with him under the stars,

Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;

Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms,

So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.

And heaven may open its shimmering doors,

And saints make music on pearly floors,

And hell may yawn to its infinite sea,

But they never can take my baby from me.

For so much a part of my soul he hath grown

That God doth know of it high on His throne.

And here I lie with him under the flowers

That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,

With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea,

Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.

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?

Yea, Master of this ruined house,

The mortgage closed, outruns the lease;

Long since is hushed the gay carouse,

And now the windowed lights must cease.

The doors all barred, the shutters up,

Dismantled, empty, wall and floor,

And now for one grim eve to sup

With Death, the bailiff, at the door.

Yea, I will take the gloomward road

Where fast the Arctic nights set in,

To reach the bourne of that abode

Which Thou hast kept for all my kin.

And all life's splendid joys forego,

Walled in with night and senseless stone,

If at the last my heart might know

Through all the dark one joy alone.

Yea, Thou mayst quench the latest spark

Of life's weird day's expectancy,

Roll down the thunders of the dark

And close the light of life for me;

Melt all the splendid blue above

And let these magic wonders die,

If Thou wilt only leave me, Love,

And Love's heart-brother, Memory.

Though all the hopes of every race

Crumbled in one red crucible,

And melted, mingled into space,

Yet, Master, Thou wert merciful.

The Children Of The Foam

OUT forever and forever,

Where our tresses glint and shiver

On the icy moonlit air;

Come we from a land of gloaming,

Children lost, forever homing,

Never, never reaching there;

Ride we, ride we, ever faster,

Driven by our demon master,

The wild wind in his despair.

Ride we, ride we, ever home,

Wan, white children of the foam.

In the wild October dawning,

When the heaven's angry awning

Leans to lakeward, bleak and drear;

And along the black, wet ledges,

Under icy, caverned edges,

Breaks the lake in maddened fear;

And the woods in shore are moaning;

Then you hear our weird intoning,

Mad, late children of the year;

Ride we, ride we, ever home,

Lost, white children of the foam.

All grey day, the black sky under,

Where the beaches moan and thunder,

Where the breakers spume and comb,

You may hear our riding, riding,

You may hear our voices chiding,

Under glimmer, under gloam;

Like a far-off infant wailing,

You may hear our hailing, hailing,

For the voices of our home;

Ride we, ride we, ever home,

Haunted children of the foam.

And at midnight, when the glimmer

Of the moon grows dank and dimmer,

Then we lift our gleaming eyes;

Then you see our white arms tossing,

Our wan breasts the moon embossing,

Under gloom of lake and skies;

You may hear our mournful chanting,

And our voices haunting, haunting,

Through the night's mad melodies;

Riding, riding, ever home,

Wild, white children of the foam.

There, forever and forever,

Will no demon-hate dissever

Peace and sleep and rest and dream:

There is neither fear nor fret there

When the tired children get there,

Only dews and pallid beam

Fall in gentle peace and sadness

Over long surcease of madness,

From hushed skies that gleam and gleam,

In the longed-for, sought-for home

Of the children of the foam.

There the streets are hushed and restful,

And of dreams is every breast full,

With the sleep that tired eyes wear;

There the city hath long quiet

From the madness and the riot,

From the failing hearts of care;

Balm of peacefulness ingliding,

Dream we through our riding, riding,

As we homeward, homeward fare;

Riding, riding, ever home,

Wild, white children of the foam.

Under pallid moonlight beaming,

Under stars of midnight gleaming,

And the ebon arch of night;

Round the rosy edge of morning,

You may hear our distant horning,

You may mark our phantom flight;

Riding, riding, ever faster,

Driven by our demon master,

Under darkness, under light;

Ride we, ride we, ever home,

Wild, white children of the foam.

Spring In Canada

SEASON of life's renewal, love's rebirth,

And all hope's young espousals; in your dream,

I feel once more the ancient stirrings of Earth.

Now in your moods benign of sun and wind,

The worn and aged, winter-wrinkled Earth,

Forgetting sorrow, sleep and iced snows,

Turns joyful to the glad sun bland and kind,

And in his kiss forgets her ancient woes.

Men scorn thy name in song in these late days

When life is sordid, crude, material, grim,

And love a laughter unto brutish minds,

Song a weariness or an idle whim,

The scoff of herds of this world's soulless hinds,

Deaf to the melody of your brooks and winds,

Blind to the beauty of your splendid dream.

Because earth's hounds and jackals bay the moon,

Must then poor Philomel forbear to sing,

Or that life's barn fowl croak in dismal tune,

Love's lark in heaven fail to lift her wing.

And even I, who feel thine ancient dreams,

Do hail thee, wondrous Spring,

Love's rare magician of this waking world,

Who turnest to melody all Earth's harshest themes,

And buildest beauty out of each bleak thing

In being, where thy roseate dreams are furled.

In thee, old age once more renews his youth,

And turns him kindling to his memoried past,

Reviving golden moments now no more,

By blossoming wood and wide sun-winnowed shore;

While youth by some supreme, divine intent,

Some spirit beneath all moods that breathe and move,

Builds o'er all earth a luminous, tremulous tent

In which to dream and love.

All elements and spirits stir and wake

From haunts of dream and death.

Loosened the waters from their iced chains

Go roaring by loud ways from fen and lake,

While all the world is filled with voice of rains,

And tender droppings toward the unborn flowers,

And rosy shoots in sunward blossoming bowers.

Loosened, the snows of Winter, cerements

From off the corpse of Autumn, waste and flee;

Loosened the gyves of slumber, plain and stream,

And all the spirits of life who build and dream

Enfranchised, glad and free.

Far out around the world by woods and meres,

Rises, like morn from night, a magic haze,

Filled with dim pearly hints of unborn days,

Of April's smiles and tears.

Far in the misty woodlands, myriad buds,

Shut leaves and petals, peeping one by one,

As in a night, leafy infinitudes,

By some kind inward magic of the sun,

Where yestereve the sad-voiced lonesome wind

Wailed a wild melody of mad Winter's mind,

Now clothed with tremulous glories of the Spring.

Or in low meadow lands some chattering brook

But last eve silent, or in slumbrous tune

Whispering hushed melodies to the wan-faced moon,

Like life slow ebbing; now with all life's dowers,

Goes loudly shouting down the joyous hours.

Wan weeds and clovers, tiny spires of green,

Rising from myriad meadows and far fields,

Drinking within the warm rains sweet and clear;

Put on the infinite glory of the year.

After long months of waiting, months of woe,

Months of withered age and sleep and death,

Months of bleak cerements of iced snow,

After dim shrunken days and long-drawn nights

Of pallid storm and haunted northern lights,

Wakens the song, the bud, the brook, the thrill,

The glory of being and the petalled breath,—

The newer wakening of a magic will,

Of life re-stirring to its infinite deeps,

By wave and shore and hooded mere and hill;—

And I, too, blind and dumb, and filled with fear,

Life-gyved and frozen, like a prisoned thing,

Feel all this glory of the waking year,

And my heart fluttering like a young bird's wing,

Doth tune itself in joyful guise to sing

The splendour and hope of all the splendid year,

The magic dream of Spring !

Spring

There dwells a spirit in the budding year-

As motherhood doth beautify the face-

That even lends these barren glebes a grace,

And fills grey hours with beauty that were drear

And bleak when the loud, storming March was here:

A glamour that the thrilled heart dimly traces

In swelling boughs and soft, wet, windy spaces,

And sunlands where the chattering birds make cheer.

I thread the uplands where the wind's footfalls

Stir leaves in gusty hollows, autumn's urns.

Seaward the river's shining breast expands,

High in the windy pines a lone crow calls,

And far below some patient ploughman turns

His great black furrow over steaming lands.

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

Like the great pity

Of God in His love; 20

Sent down out of heaven

On its sorrow and crime,

Blotting them, folding them

Under its rime.

Fluttering, rustling,

Soft as a breath,

The whisper of leaves,

The low pinions of death,

Or the voice of the dawning,

When day has its birth,

Is the music of silence

It makes to the earth.

Thus down out of heaven,

Frost-kissed

And wind driven,

Flake upon flake,

Over forest and lake,

Cometh the snow.