How one Winter Came in the Lake Region

William Wilfred Campbell 1860 (Newmarket) – 1918 (Ottawa)



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

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

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

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

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

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

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:22 min read
140

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAAB CDCCD EFEEF XXGGX HIHHI JKJJK
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,463
Words 272
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5

William Wilfred Campbell

William Wilfred Campbell (1 June ca. 1860 – 1 January 1918) was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott. By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the "unofficial poet laureate of Canada." Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a "versatile, interesting writer" who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.  more…

All William Wilfred Campbell poems | William Wilfred Campbell Books

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