greatpoetry | Entries tagged with william wilfred campbell

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Bereavement of the Fields

Soft fall the February snows, and soft
Falls on my heart the snow of wintry pain;
For never more, by wood or field or croft,
Will he we knew walk with his loved again;
No more, with eyes adream and soul aloft,
In those high moods where love and beauty reign,
Greet his familiar fields, his skies without a stain.

Soft fall the February snows, and deep,
Like downy pinions from the moulting breast
Of all the mothering sky, round his hushed sleep,
Flutter a million loves upon his rest,
Where once his well-loved flowers were fain to peep,
With adder-tongue and waxen petals prest,
In young spring evenings reddening down the west.

Soft fall the February snows, and hushed
Seems life's loud action, all its strife removed,
Afar, remote, where grief itself seems crushed,
And even hope and sorrow are reproved;
For he whose cheek erstwhile with hope was flushed,
And by the gentle haunts of being moved,
Hath gone the way of all he dreamed and loved.

Soft fall the February snows, and lost,
This tender spirit gone with scarce a tear,
Ere, loosened from the dungeons of the frost,
Wakens with yearnings new the enfranchised year,
Late winter-wizened, gloomed, and tempest-tost;
And Hesper's gentle, delicate veils appear,
When dream anew the days of hope and fear.

( And Mother Nature, she whose heart is fain, )

by William Wilfred Campbell

(Written in memory of Archibald Lampman, who died on 10 February 1899)

duathir.livejournal.com

Pan the Fallen

He wandered into the market
With pipes and goatish hoof;
He wandered in a grotesque shape,
And no one stood aloof.
For the children crowded round him,
The wives and greybeards, too,
To crack their jokes and have their mirth,
And see what Pan would do.

The Pan he was they knew him,
Part man, but mostly beast,
Who drank, and lied, and snatched what bones
Men threw him from their feast;
Who seemed in sin so merry,
So careless in his woe,
That men despised, scarce pitied him,
And still would have it so.

He swelled his pipes and thrilled them,
And drew the silent tear;
He made the gravest clack with mirth
By his sardonic leer.
He blew his pipes full sweetly
At their amused demands,
And caught the scornful, earth-flung pence
That fell from careless hands.

( He saw the mob's derision, )

by William Wilfred Campbell

duathir.livejournal.com

How One Winter Came in the Lake Region

For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
In those grey, withered days.

Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;
The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
And hushed its caverns loud.

Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,
Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute
Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root
The tree-toad trilled his dream.

From day to day still hushed the season's mood,
The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;
Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,
And all the world, with ominous silence, stood
In weird expectancy:

When one strange night the sun like blood went down,
Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue;
Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown,
Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,
But never a wind-breath blew.

That night I felt the winter in my veins,
A joyous tremor of the icy glow;
And woke to hear the north's wild vibrant strains,
While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,
Fast fell the driving snow.

by William Wilfred Campbell

duathir.livejournal.com

An October Evening

The woods are haggard and lonely,
The skies are hooded for snow,
The moon is cold in Heaven,
And the grasses are sere below.

The bearded swamps are breathing
A mist from meres afar,
And grimly the Great Bear circles
Under the pale Pole Star.

There is never a voice in Heaven,
Nor ever a sound on earth,
Where the spectres of winter are rising
Over the night's wan girth.

There is slumber and death in the silence,
There is hate in the winds so keen;
And the flash of the north's great sword-blade
Circles its cruel sheen.

The world grows agèd and wintry,
Love's face peakèd and white;
And death is kind to the tired ones
Who sleep in the north to-night.

by William Wilfred Campbell

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The woods are haggard and lonely,
The skies are hooded for snow,
The moon is cold in Heaven,
And the grasses are sere below.
The bearded swamps are breathing
A mist from meres afar,
And grimly the Great Bear circles
Under the pale Pole Star.
There is never a voice in Heaven,
Nor ever a sound on earth,
Where the spectres of winter are rising
Over the night's wan girth.
There is slumber and death in the silence,
There is hate in the winds so keen;
And the flash of the north's great sword-blade
Circles its cruel sheen.
The world grows agèd and wintry,
Love's face peakèd and white;
And death is kind to the tired ones
Who sleep in the north to-night.
--William Wilfred Campbell

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