The lake, a silver mirror in a frame of green;
The swans on it but white fancies in a whiter dream.
The enchanted bowl of blue below the rim,
But a goblet with liquid diamonds, filled to the brim.
White within white, a song in a sea,
Painted within a mirror, green hill and tree.
Moveless music, without murmur or moan;
Swan-made curves, its tune, its measure, and tone.
The cloud-ships afire in the west;
Crimson, the surface of the lake;
The sun-brush paints the forest-canvas
In gold and green and red;
While the breeze-child turns the leaves of the trees
In the book of sunset-images for twilight dreams.
Listen a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely
woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus
rider's silver dress.
Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a
lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mixing
their green and white among stars shattered
in spray clear nights.
I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots
under my heart the same as a lonely woman, a
lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus rider's
silver dress.
Passing through huddled and ugly walls
By doorways where women
Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,
Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,
Out from the huddled and ugly walls,
I came sudden, at the city's edge,
On a blue burst of lake,
Long lake waves breaking under the sun
On a spray-flung curve of shore ;
And a fluttering storm of gulls,
Masses of great gray wings
And flying white bellies
Veering and wheeling free in the open.
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps.
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.
Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it
is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan.
A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach
farms of Saugatuck.
Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a
flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill.
Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping
in curves are loops of light from prow and stern
to the tall smokestacks.
Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a
hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses
playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.
I AM a field spread warm before the sun —
Lord of my day! Your love is warmth and light.
In me all growth and pleasure are begun:
A bird soars singing to salute your height.
Love, my fond words,
Are happy birds!
I am the sun's self,
And you the waters of a still bright lake;
My arms encircling airs,
Which draw you, drink you, for my sun-ship's sake.