The Great Lakes

I would bring you a song, O lakes:
A song of delight and desire;
A song of the spring that wakes,
Of the warm red light that shakes
Far over your white ice-pyre.

I would breathe you a song, O lakes;
A song of the love that thrills
The heart of the year, and breaks
The bonds of winter, and eases
The thirst of the season in tiny little streams and rills.

I would breathe you a song, O lakes;
And the bountiful answer you give, O lakes;
And the love and the music it wakes
Entrances my spirit and makes
Me thankful to God that I live!

By blue Ontario's shore
 . . . . . . . . . .

— The rest of this text is not
currently in the database but will be
added as soon as we obtain it. —

A dash of yellow sand,
Wind-scattered and sun-tanned;
Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;
And, creeping close to these
Long shores that lounge at ease,
Old Erie rocks and ripples to a fresh sou’-western breeze.

A sky of blue and grey;
Some stormy clouds that play
At scurrying up with ragged edge, then laughing blow away,
Just leaving in their trail
Some snatches of a gale;
To whistling summer winds we lift a single daring sail.

O! wind so sweet and swift,
O! danger-freighted gift
Bestowed on Erie with her waves that foam and fall and lift,
We laugh in your wild face,
And break into a race
With flying clouds and tossing gulls that weave and interlace.

— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —

On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting,
She across his knee and they are looking face into face
Talking to each other without words, singing rhythms in silence to each other.

A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-going boat,
Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of green,
And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his knee.

I have lived in many half-worlds myself … and so I know you.
 
I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the 
     same circling birds and the same plunge of fur-
     rows carved by the plowing keel.
 
I leaned so ... and you fluttered struggling between 
     two waves in the air now … and then 
     under the water and out again … a fish … a bird 
     … a fin thing … a wing thing.
 
Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing 
    … I have lived in many half-worlds myself … and 
    so I know you.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

A lone gray bird
 [ ... ]

"Father of Lakes !" thy waters bend,
     Beyond the eagle's utmost view,
When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send
     Back to the sky its world of blue.

Boundless and deep the forests weave
     Their twilight shade thy borders o'er,
And threatening cliffs, like giants, heave
     Their rugged forms along thy shore.

Pale Silence, mid thy hollow caves,
     With listening ear, in sadness brood ;
Or startled Echo, o'er thy waves,
     Sends the hoarse wolf -notes of thy woods.

Nor can the light canoes, that glide
     Across thy breast like things of air,
Chase from thy lone and level tide,
     The spell of stillness deepening there.

Yet round this waste of wood and wave,
     Unheard, unseen, a spirit lives,
That, breathing o'er each rock and cave,
     To all, a wild, strange aspect gives.

The thunder-riven oak, that flings
     Its grisly arms athwart the sky,
A sudden, startling image brings
     To the lone traveller's kindled eye.

The gnarl'd and braided boughs that show
     Their dim forms in the forest shade,
Like wrestling serpents seem, and throw
     Fantastic horrors through the glade.

The very echoes round this shore,
     Have caught a strange and gibbering tone,
For they have told the war-whoop o'er,
     Till the wild chorus is their own.

Wave of the wilderness, adieu !
     Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds, ye woods !
Roll on, thou Element of blue,
     And fill these awful solitudes!

Thou hast no tale to tell of man —
     God is thy theme. Ye sounding caves,
Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan,
     Deems as a bubble all your waves !

I love thee, lakes, and all thy glorious world,
Blue, wrinkled , mist- encircled ' neath the sky.
And far unto thy realm of waves impearled
My heart, bird- like, doth fly .

Thou art to me as love to lover sad,
As sun to flower, as husband unto wife ;
I think of thee and all the hours are glad,
And dead are pain and strife.

Thou comest to me as cooling draught to one,
Hot parched and faint with unassuagéd thirst ;
My spirit tranced within thy air and sun
Forgets the world is cursed.

Thou knowest nor hate, nor death, nor sin, nor pain,
Nor woeful partings, bitterness and tears ;
But only days that sleep to wake again,
Across thy golden years .