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Out
in a world of death far to the northward lying,
Under the sun and the moon, under
the dusk and the day;
Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets dying,
Wan and waste and white, stretch
the great lakes away.
Never a
bud of spring, never a laugh of summer,
Never a dream of love, never a
song of bird;
But only the silence and white, the shores that grow chiller and
dumber,
Wherever the ice winds sob, and
the griefs of winter are heard.
Crags that
are black and wet out of the grey lake looming,
Under the sunset's flush and the
pallid, faint glimmer of dawn;
Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are booming
Thunders of wintry woe over the
spaces wan.
Lands that
loom like spectres, whited regions of winter,
Wastes of desolate woods, deserts
of water and shore;
A world of winter and death, within these regions who enter,
Lost to summer and life, go to
return no more.
Moons that
glimmer above, waters that lie white under,
Miles and miles of lake far out
under the night;
Foaming crests of waves, surfs that shoreward thunder,
Shadowy shapes that flee, haunting
the spaces white.
Lonely hidden
bays, moon-lit, ice-rimmed, winding,
Fringed by forests and crags, haunted
by shadowy shores;
Hushed from the outward strife, where the mighty surf is grinding
Death and hate on the rocks, as
sandward and landward it roars.
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