Morning on the Shore / William Wilfred Campbell

 
Morning on the Shore 

The lake is blue with morning; and the sky
      Sweet, clear, and burnished as an orient pearl.
      High in its vastness, scream and skim and whirl
White gull-flocks where the gleaming beaches die
Into dim distance, where great marshes lie.
      The dew-wet road in ruddy sunlight gleams,
      The sweet, cool earth, the clear blue heaven on high.
Across the morn a carolling school-boy goes,
Filling the world with youth to heaven’s stair;
      Some chattering squirrel answers from his tree;
But down beyond the headland, where ice-floes
Are great in winter, pleading in mute prayer,
      A dead, drowned face stares up immutably.

~~
William Wilfred Campbell (1860-1918)
from The Dread Voyage Poems, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

William Wilfred Campbell biography