To the Lakes

BLUE, limpid, mighty, restless lakes,
God's mirrors underneath the sky ;
Low rimmed in woods and mists, where wakes,
Through murk and moon, the marsh -bird's cry.

Where ever on, through drive and drift,
'Neath blue and grey, through hush and moan,
Your ceaseless waters ebb and lift,
Past shores of century-crumbling stone.

And under ever-changing skies,
Swell, throb, and break on kindling beach ;
Where fires of dawn responsive rise,
In answer to your mystic speech.

Past lonely haunts of gull and loon,
Past solitude of land-locked bays,
Whose bosoms rise to meet the moon
Beneath their silvered film of haze.

Where mists and fogs — in ghostly bands,
Vague, dim, moon-clothed in spectral white —
Drift in from far-off haunted lands,
Across the silences of night.