How One Winter Came in the Lake Region

How One Winter Came in the Lake Region

Original Text
William Wilfred Campbell, The Dread Voyage: Poems (Toronto: William Briggs, 1893), pp. 164-66. B-10 5840 Fisher Library.
1For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
2     Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
3The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
4And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
5     In those grey, withered days.
6Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
7     At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;
8The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
9The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
10     And hushed its caverns loud.
11Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
12     Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,
13Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute
14Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root
15     The tree-toad trilled his dream.
16From day to day still hushed the season's mood,
17     The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;
18Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,
19And all the world, with ominous silence, stood
20     In weird expectancy:
21When one strange night the sun like blood went down,
22     Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue;
23Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown,
24Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,
25     But never a wind-breath blew.
26That night I felt the winter in my veins,
27     A joyous tremor of the icy glow;
28And woke to hear the north's wild vibrant strains,
29While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,
30     Fast fell the driving snow.

Notes

6] blear: dim. Back to Line
12] blue: blue jay, a bird native to Ontario. Back to Line
17] runnels: channels. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1890
Publication Notes
Published in Century.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme
abaab