Poetry
Lake Lyrics and Other Poems
Wilfred Campbell · 1889
Opening lines
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.
Text quoted from canadiana.ca
Synopsis
A prelude opens the book on the inland waters of the Canadian West. The first part follows Lake Huron and Georgian Bay: mists, gulls, shores and legends of lakes, as far as the frozen great lakes of a winter world. The second takes up a slim collection of 1888, with the poem in which the red forest lines the smoky hills of the Indian summer. The last mixes biblical subjects and public odes, to Tennyson or from Canada to Great Britain. Throughout, nature takes the place of revelation.
Context
The volume appeared in 1889 in Saint John, New Brunswick, from J. & A. McMillan, and reprints in full a collection published the previous year. Its author was then rector of a parish in the province and was to leave the ministry two years later. His contemporaries noted the intense rhythm, dramatic imagery and ardent spirituality of his verse, in which nature reveals the presence of God.
Who it is for
A collection of about seventy-five poems in three parts, with a heavily marked metre. It is better taken in pieces than in one go.
Prizes and reception
The book earned him the nickname of the lake laureate, and it contains the piece on Indian summer that remains one of the country's best-loved poems.
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