On Lake Temiscamingue
On Lake Temiscamingue
Original Text
The Poems of Archibald Lampman, ed. Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: George N. Morang, 1900): 293, as reprinted in The Poems of Archibald Lampman (including At the Long Sault), intro. by Margaret Coulby
2 The sombre forest and the wan-lit lake,
3Halves with its slim gray stem and pendent green
4 The shadowed point. Beyond it without break
5Bold brows of pine-topped granite bend away,
6 Far to the southward, fading off in grand
7Soft folds of looming purple. Cool and gray,
8 The point runs out, a blade of thinnest sand.
9Two rivers meet beyond it: wild and clear,
10 Their deepening thunder breaks upon the ear--
11The one descending from its forest home
12 By many an eddied pool and murmuring fall--
13The other cloven through the mountain wall,
14 A race of tumbled rocks, a road of foam.
Notes
1] Témiscamingue, a French form of the Algonquin word for "deep water," names the lake that flows south through rapids into the Ottawa River. In 1896 the area was served by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1943
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1997.
Rhyme